Started a small c-corp almost a year ago but unfortunately didn't start proper bookkeeping. Trying to get it right now. We aren't redoing a year's worth of banking transactions and instead we are starting with our opening balance from January 1, 2010.

When we launched on Mar 3, 2009 we issued 200 no-par stock shares. How should that be journaled?

We sold 100 of those shares for $100/share to the two primary shareholders. How do we journal that?

Thanks!

It would have been a debit to cash and a credit to Common Stock. The difficulty is that I'm not sure how you're going to get it into cash and get everything to come out.

Theoretically, if you got everything covered (in totals), then the cash should just come out, but that could be difficult. I'd suggest finding a way to summarize all the transactions. Do you have a record of stuff, even if not "proper"?

Yes, we do have a record that we can piece together. I was just trying to avoid that. Is there a recommended way to summarize?

I meant like one or just a few big giant journal entries. You need enough records to at least do taxes, meaning you need to know basic categories of income and expenses. But you can lump this all into some broad categories.

You can try using an Excel spreadsheet. It's hard for me to say without having the stuff in front of me, since I don't know what kind of info you have, whether everything mostly went in and out of the bank account, or whether you have any loans, or what these "records" you have consist of, etc.

I've tried to write out some 'for instances' twice now, and both times it turned into a complication because I don't know what stuff might be involved. Like if you have loans, if you paid salaries, if you've summarized everything that went through the checking account, etc. If I knew what you had, I might be able to give some shortcuts... or you can just try it and then come back with specifics of something that got complicated. Just hard to do this on a forum, sorry.

I think I follow you. We had initial investment from owners and then just cash in and out of the bank for sales, bills, supplies, etc. I will take a stab at this. Thank you for your help!

That sounds like it won't be too terrible. Good luck!