I have been told I need to put journal entries through the accounts as the vat was not recorded in the opening balance figures. There are sales and purchase ledger invoices. Can someone please tell me the accounts I should be debiting and crediting so I can see if I have done it correctly?
do you mean that the opening figures were not balanced? or do you mean that the VAT element was excluded completely when the invocies were posted previously?
The company I am employed by have had to move from a single cash system. The one they are running down records payments on receipt or payments when made, they do not input invoices as such beforehand. This is totally alien to me.
When I was employed the Accountant sat with me and told me to input all the balances outstanding as at 31 Mar 09. These were input but all as gross figures. Now I am being told vat should have been taken into account and I am trying to find out if this is the case.
ok, another question is - are these opening figures the year end opening figures or just because you are moving the data to Sage.
If they are just moving to Sage, I guess you will have posted the Sales Invoices to a 4000 code? The it will be just a case of doing a journal to move the VAT element
DR 4000 CR 2200 Sales Tax Control Account
This will have the effect of removing the VAT from the P&L and placing it on the Balance Sheet.
When the time comes to do the VAT, be careful to ensure the correct Output Tax is journalled to 2202 VAT Liability.
These are the figures from the year end. The company had to move their accounts onto Sage as from 1st April this year. The Accountant told me to input the outstanding balances ie purchase/sales ledger invoices to the suspense account then do the relevant journals.
All entries were input as gross figures but now I am being told vat should have been included.
I have put journals through for the vat elements by debiting the sales/purchase tax control account and crediting the creditors/debtors control account. Now I am wondering if this is correct but if I had input the entries to the suspense account I would still have to journal them out.
so if the entries are from the year end, they will be balance sheets items only and the amount in the debtors control account should be gross figures anyway - so now I'm a little confused as to what figures you are transferring over, as the VAT would have been a separate entry from the year end figures...
if the VAT was not accounted for before the year end, that would mean the sales figures have been overstated etc and the P&L would be wrong
To set up opening balances in Sage for Purchase and Sales Ledgers, one sets up the individual account first.
I.E. Go to Customers and either use tab New or Record & set up the customer. This is where opening balances are input & Sage deals automatically with the VAT & posts the other half of the transaction to suspense. It sounds as though you haven't set up the individul Customer accounts in the Sales Ledger.
If this is the case, and have Journalled in opening balances to the Sales Ledger Control Account, you'd do best to reverse those journals & input the opening balances in the correct way.
You always want the individual Sales & Purchase Ledger Accounts Balances to total the Balance of the Control Account. Thus one should never Journal transactions into the Control Accounts
