If you wish to see just one year's amounts on the balance sheet, when you run the balance sheet report, select the first month of your financial year to run the report from, rather than "Brought forward". When you do this, the "Year to date" column will show the balance sheet at the end of the period, and the "Period" column will show the changes to the balance sheet in the period in question - and those changes are, by definition "one year's amounts"; the amount shown for "Cash at bank and in hand", for example, won't be the combined balances on your cash and bank accounts, but the sum total of all the transactions that have been recorded for those accounts.

I find that most people don't seem to understand this and, if anythng, get confused by what is shown in the "Period" column on the balance sheet compared with the same column on the profit and loss account. The reality is that in terms of the maths, they're both doing exactly the same thing.

When you run either of the standard P&L and balance sheet reports in Sage you are prompted to enter a period start and end, which goes from "Brought forward" through each month of your financial year, up to "Future".

Both reports present the results with a "Period" and a "Year to Date" column. "Period" shows you the total of all the transactions for each line/category running from the start of the period that was selected, to the end of the period - and therefore represents the *changes* in that period. "Year to date" shows the same total, but running from the brought forward balances, so is the running total up to the end of the period.

On the P&L (and in an ideal world where no mistakes have been made), the brought forward balances will be zero, so if you run from the first month of the year, "Period" and "Year to date" should be the same - and since they are changes from zero, that's how they can represent what the title of the report is: The profit and loss. Similarly, if you run it for just (say) the fifth month of the year, "Period" will contain the changes just in that month; the profit and loss for the month, while year to date will contain the changes for the year up to the fifth month; the profit and loss for the five months of the year so far.

On the balance sheet, however, the brought forward balances contain the closing balances at the end of last year. Therefore if you run it from the first month of the year, "Period" and "Year to date" will differ - the difference being the opening balances, which are included in the latter, but not the former. Therefore, "Year to date" is showing you your actual balance sheet at the end of the period, and "Period" is showing you the changes within that period. So, if you were to run the balance sheet report for the fifth month of the year and look at (say) your "Trade debtors", then the "Year to date" column is showing you how much money you were owed by your customers at the end of the fifth month, and "Period" is showing you how much that has increased or decreased since the end of the fourth month.