After putting away the accounting software trials for a while because my head was starting to hurt, I'm trying to get back into it because the year is moving on, the pile of paper and notes is getting higher and I dont actually have anything recorded on disk yet!
I've gone back to VT Transaction+ for a second look. I really like the look of this software and the fact that it gets a lot of good comments on this forum is helping with that choice, however I keep stumbling at the first hurdle.
As I've said in a previous post, my wife registered as self-employed and I've got the job of doing the sums for her. Going through the various templates in VT Trans+ the one that seems the best fit is the Self Employment one, however the first thing the software tells me to do is to enter opening balances and analyse the transaction to Creditors: Opening balances contra. I cant do this because the Self Employment template doesnt have a creditors ledger or an opening balances contra account.
Should I create the ledger and account or is that actually some sort of special ledger and account which means creating it manually wont be the same thing?
Is the template broken? Should I use Sole Trader instead - that template seems to have a lot of stuff that isnt going to be needed/used but it does have the Creditors: Opening balances contra.
if I understand you correctly, this is your wife's first set of accounts as self-employed. If that is true, then she won't have any opening creditors (or any other opening balances) to record.
Yes it is her first set of accounts however she is using a her personal bank account for her business stuff (to keep it seperate from our main joint account) and that account had a balance of around £300 when she registered for SA. Up until that point, the only thing we used her account for was to transfer £190 per month from the main account via standing order to pay the council tax of £150 per month, which left £40 per month building up.
At some point we will move the direct debit for the council tax to our main account but until we do that how should I record the £190, the £150 and the £40 left over? Do I just record the £190 as capital introduced and the £150 as drawings and the £40 isn't actually specifically recorded anywhere, or is there some other way I should do it?
