I am doing some work experience at a firm. The objective is to eventually produce the YE accounts in Sage. The entire exercise has been broken dow in a number of tasks. Remember, this is set of mock accounts aimed at giving people like me practice of entering things on Sage so that things may not resemble real life processes.
I know that I have made a mistake in recording transfers between two particular accounts twice. I just want to corect it.
Task one: Entered customer transactions. Raised invoces. Where necessary created new customers etc.
Task two: Entered supplier invoices
Task three: Entered transactions involving Account A. Recorderd payment received, credit notes paid, suppliers paid and transfers between Account B and Account A.
At the end of each month, I reconciled the account so that it matches the statement for that month. Each time I ensured that there were no un-reconciled items in the top window of the reconciliation page.
Task three: this is where I made the mistake. I entered all the transaction on the Account B statement including transfers between Accounts A and B (my bad!)
Every time I reconciled Account B there were always a set of un-reconciled transfers involving Account A ("unreconciled transfers") in the top window. All entries on the statements were matched.
Steps I took to correct my mistake
As taught, to get rid of the unreconciled transfers in the top window I reversed each transfer (posting the reversals on the same day as the unreconciled transfers). I then matched each incorrect transfer with its reversal in the top window and completed the reconciliation. The balance in Sage matched the blance on my statements and there were no unreconciled items remained in the top window. I repeated this for each of the four months up to YE.
The effect on "Account A"
When I go back to the reconciliation window for Account A, I notice that there are now transfers involving Account B in the unreconciled (top) window. Remember there were none when I originally reconciled Account A ( Step three above).
Correcting the "new" un-reconciled transfers in Account A
You can probably guess what happened next... I reversed a number of the newly unreconciled transfers, matched them in the Account A reconciliation window. Lo and behold these corrections appear in the unreconciled window of Account B. Again, remember there were no unreconciled transfers when I reconciled Account B (step Four above).
Questions:
1. Am following the right procedure to reverse the transfers?
2. Why am I am I caught in this circular process of reversing and reconciling?
Blimey, that was very painful to write. I am sure it will be even more painful to read. But if anyone can suggest some way out of this predicament, I will be very grateful.
If all those original transfers were entered AS transfers, and ONLY between these two accounts, there shouldn't be a problem. That there is, suggests that's not what you've done.
Where you've described the third task - you entered all the Account B transactions, including the transfers - that (as I think you've realised, since you identify it as where you made the mistake) was duplicating them; one side of the transfer would already have been showing in Sage on this account, and you've put it in again.
However, that duplication would have put the other side of the transfer into Account A - but it clearly hasn't since when you reverse the duplications, the other side of the reversal is showing in Account A, but not the original duplication.
My guess is that when you made the mistake of entering the transfers (again) on Account B, you've put the other side of the transfer in another account again. The two most obvious possibilities are:
Possibility 1: If you used Sage's 'Transfers' dialogue to enter them, you've selected the wrong bank account - are there any other accounts in Sage's Bank screen? (There will probably be a cash account, possibly a credit card account, and there could be other bank accounts. Do any of the balances on those look a bit odd? If so, take a peek - are they the 'missing' other side of your duplicated transfers?)
Possibility 2: You entered the second set of transfers as payments/receipts, in which case you need to identify what nominal code you posted them to.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
