Overview

When switching to ChildFriendly from another system, it’s essential to set accurate starting balances for each family to ensure a clean transition. This guide walks you and your accountant through how to enter outstanding debits or credits, as of your chosen start date, allowing you to begin financial tracking within ChildFriendly without discrepancies.

We recommend that your share this article with your accounant to have them complete these important steps, ensuring a smooth transition for everyone

Step 1: Enter Student Balances

Choose the official start date from which you plan to begin using ChildFriendly to manage your center’s financial records going forward. As of that date, for each student, enter their account balance:

Enter a positive number if the family owes fees for that student
Enter a negative number if the family has a credit or overpayment for that student

Important: From your chosen start date forward, all billing and payments, must be recorded in ChildFriendly to keep balances accurate.

Step 2: Avoid Dupicate Balances in Quickbooks

Continue with this step only if you are planning to sync ChildFriendly with Quickbooks Online.

You have two options to ensure balances that you entered in Step 1, do not duplicate during syncing with Quickbooks.

Option 1: Close Your Books in QuickBooks: Close your books as of the date you enter balances into ChildFriendly. This prevents the starting balances that were entered in Step 1, to be entered into Quickbooks, creating a duplicate balance.

Option 2: Make an Opposite Entry in QuickBooks

If you do not want to close your books:

After entering balances in ChildFriendly, create manual offsetting entries in QuickBooks (e.g., if a child has a $200 balance in ChildFriendly, enter a -$200 adjustment in QuickBooks).
When the system syncs, the ChildFriendly balance will restore the correct total in QuickBooks.

This ensures your financial records remain accurate and do not double-count balances.

Updated on: 19/05/2025