I have just taken on a new client who has been using sage instant for producing invoices and also allocating his cash received to these invoices. This is all that is on the system. ( He wants me to start adding everything on). He has been doing this for about 3 years and has never ran a year end. His year starts 1st April and he is on cash accounting and his last quarter ended 30th April.
My question is - could I just run the year ends until they are up to date and then carry on or would it be best to start afresh from 1st April. My worry is that the bank balance at the moment is obviously well out, but If I entered what it should be there will be a lot of unreconcilable amounts in suspense when I come to entering the opening balances ( which i won't receive for quite a while). Am I making sense? I am thinking it would be better to start afresh but I am worried that this will take unnecassary time.
IMHO if he wants the job done properly which is why he has approached you to work for him then I would go back to the beginning and post everything you have in date order and then run the year ends once you are sure that everything is entered and correct for that year. Yes this will take a while but it will take as long as it takes to get the job done properly.
I would go back to the beginning and start from there, it may seem like a lot of extra work but I think that it may save you time in the long run and at least your client knows that his books are correct, up to date and that you are being thorough. That is just my opinion.
Thanks for your advice, I have decided that you are both right, it would be better to start at the beginning. You just worry when you are new to all this that you are taking longer than you should, but like they say, "if a jobs worth doing its worth doing well".
Thanks again Denise
-- Edited by Denise on Wednesday 8th of July 2009 11:38:41 AM
I have been in this position for a few clients. Would say best to check with client and if there is an accountant ask them. One of the clients and their accountant wanted doing the old information and reconciling and bringing up to date that way, the other client and accountant as accounts already been produced for the other years they said to backup the old data, then clear sage and start from scratch using the accountants accounts as the opening balances.
Like you say, I think I should check with their accountants because doing the past years would be pointless when those accounts have already been produced. I was thinking of starting afresh from 1st April this year. I have the opening bank balance and opening debtors/creditors (hopefully these are correct. It is the list my client made and gave to his accountants). Then enter the rest of the opening balances when I receive them.
The only thing is, there are some payments that have cleared bank at the beginning of April(direct debits etc) but are not on his outstanding creditors list for the end of March, so hence I have no opening balance figures for them to post the payments to. Oh the joys of bookkeeping.
Denise
-- Edited by Denise on Wednesday 8th of July 2009 01:12:33 PM
-- Edited by Denise on Wednesday 8th of July 2009 01:16:02 PM
If they don't want you to put everything in for past years, you could rebuild the data and blow away any journals etc from prior to the current year, but keep the customer data and then start with opening balances from the accountant at the beginning of the currect year.
Hi. Thanks Weebly one, thats exactly what I decided to do. As I said, at the moment I only have opening debtors/creditors and bank accounts but I have been working my way through and seems to be going okay. Do you think adding the rest of the opening balances later could cause problems? But the accountants are in no rush and I really wanted to get this as much up to date as I could before It starts mounting up.
Hi, thats what I thought. Also my client is keen to keep his daily invoicing up to date, so waiting for opening balances arriving was not really an option.
