New owner of existing store

[Yoda]

I have recently taken over an existing retail store that has been in business for about 9 months. The previous owners started using quickbooks but stopped entering most data after about 6 months. One thing they kept up fairly well was the inventory. We are a gift shop with about 3000 different items. I want to use Quickbooks & because of the large inventory database, would not like to start over. What can I do to keep their inventory and most of their accounts but start over financially on the day we took over?

Thanks for the help,

[Lorin Browning]

Print a trial balance for the day you took over. Once you have the printout, do a general journal entry for each and every account except the inventory accounts. If an account has a debit balance, enter a credit balance for that account. If an account has a credit balance, enter a debit balance for that account. Do nothing to the inventory accounts.

To finish your general journal entry, make a debit or credit entry (whichever is required to balance the transaction) to an owner's equity account. Post and you are on your way.

Personally, I would do a backup before I began so that if I screwed up, I still could access the original data.

[Yoda]

Got it, especially the part about a backup. I will give it a try.

Thanks,