Have you set up your previous accounting period and need to start selling and generating revenue quickly? Our series on transferring opening balances continues with an important topic: setting up your price list and initial stock levels. So what is the easiest way to do this?
The easiest way to transfer an extensive price list into ABRA Flexi and set up initial stock levels is by importing from Excel. Most other accounting applications allow you to export a product catalog and stock status in XLS format. Some applications also support the more modern XLSX format, which however cannot be used for import into ABRA Flexi. You will therefore need to open the XLSX file first and save it as Microsoft Excel (97-2003) format.
For a successful import into ABRA Flexi, it is best to split the source XLS file into two parts. First, you import records from one file into the Price List register, and then from the second file into the Stock Cards register.
Importing into the Price List register
In the XLS file intended for import into the Price List register, keep the product information — i.e. Name, Code, Unit of measure, Sales price, etc. Add a column called Stock, with a value of A. This column indicates that stock cards will exist for the product (ABRA Flexi will track stock levels). All other columns in the file should either be removed or moved to the end.
To import into the Price List register, go to the menu Tools → Import → Import from Excel. In the wizard, specify which columns your file contains and in what order, then start the import.
Excel import settings for the sample price list file
Importing into the Stock Cards register
Once the price list import is complete, you can proceed with importing stock cards. From the original XLS file, remove all columns except for the product identifier (this is the column you used as the Code when importing into the Price List register), the stock quantity in units of measure, and the stock value in the local currency. If the XLS file contains a warehouse identifier, keep it. You should now have an XLS file with three or four columns. If the warehouse identifier was not included, you will need to add it (the column must contain the Code from the warehouse list in ABRA Flexi). Another column you need to add is the accounting period identifier. This is because ABRA Flexi links stock cards to accounting periods. The value in this column should be the Code of the previous accounting period that you created in the first article of this series (in our case, 2017).
To import into the Stock Cards register, follow the same procedure as for the Price List. In the menu Tools → Import, select Import from Excel. Configure the columns and their order according to your XLS file, then start the import.
Excel import settings for the sample stock cards file
After a successful import, new stock cards should appear in the Stock Cards register. In the Goods Receipts/Issues register, receipt documents will be created automatically to add the goods into stock. These receipts will have their issue date set to the first day of the accounting period and a document number beginning with MIG. In most cases there will be several of them, each containing 100 products.
You can handle the correct posting of receipts using bulk changes.