When you add a new student to your TutorPanel account the student may have credits from past payments or they may owe you money. It's a good idea to record a transaction for the student to reflect their starting account balance. This will ensure that their account balance appears correctly in the accounts section of TutorPanel and on invoices.
To add an opening balance, go to the Accounting tab and hover your cursor over Fees & Crdits. If the student owes money then select "Add a Fee". If the student has a credit balance then click "Issue a Credit".
On the following page you can enter the details of the transaction. It's a good idea to include "Starting Balance" or a title along these lines in the "Reason" field so that when the transaction is viewed in any tables it will be easy to identify that the transaction is related to the student's starting balance.
After you've entered the details, save the form and the student's opening balance will be set.
Note: Fees & Credits are tied specifically to student accounts and not to parents. This means you'll need to find the child or children of a parent to set the starting balance for a family.