We have a new accountant and he advised me that the previous accountant did not post the opening balances for our new financial year starting 1st april 2011.
He has given me adjustments to make and my question is do i change the date on Sage to either 31st April 2011 or 1st April 2011 and make the adjustments.
Opening balance adjustments are normally posted on the first day of the new year (following the year that the accountant has just prepared accounts for) eg - Accountant prepares accounts to 31 March 2011, and supplies an opening balances journal to be posted on 1 April 2011.
Technically it doesn't matter what date you use as long as they are entered.
I always enter them on the last day of the year (i.e. the year end date) 31/03/11 because then when you run a trial balance, if you select the b/f option this should show the figures as agreed with your accountant.
As Rob says, it doesn't technically matter, as they are normally adjustments to balance sheet codes. It's a traditional(?) convention (does it hark back to the days when software wouldnt allow back-posting into closed periods?? And I think lots of software would ping up a little warning about posting into a year that's "closed"). Personally, it helps me, because I tell clients not to back-post at all, even if their software allows them to, as a blanket rule, to prevent (or at least reduce) the chances of clients corrupting their own data.
