I have just taken over the accounts for a business who previously used quickbooks. They wanted to change mid year, so i have used a trial balance to enter opening balances. year runs Jan to Dec, printed a tb from end of october and entered these as opening balances as of end of october onto each nominal. Now that i have done this, i have a suspense account opened (showing as a minus figure, debit side of the tb. have i done something wrong?
After doing this, i found out that the previous person never reconciled the bank and the records were never kept accuratly, i wonder if i should adjust the bank balance so from now on we can accuratly reconcile.
Sorry if i sound incredibly silly, i have never started mid year before, with books in such a mess!
When posting individual debtors and creditors using the O/B function on SAGE you Dr the debtor (and the control account N/C 1200) with a credit posting to suspense. So when you post your TBL you post debtors control account to suspense rather than debtors control account to cancel this out. Opposite happens for creditors ie you end up with a Dr being posted to suspense. The suspense balance may have something to do with this and may be the net balance of your debtors and creditors?
Depends how messy the accounts are and how confident you are that they are reasonably accurate. If you are not, then I would be inclined to go back and post the full year from the start using the signed accounts as the opening balances. All depends on how confident you are that the figures are reasonable and how long it would take to go back and post the historic info (and whether you would get paid for it.).
