I am still in the process of waiting for my adjustments from the accountant for my end of year 2012! and now he has decided to go away until end of March. I have been waiting to enter purchase and sales invoices until I can close off 2012 so my opening balances are more accurate when starting the year 2013.
As you all will be aware the VAT quarter payment date is fast approaching. What is all your views on posting invoices Sales and Purchase in 2013 on Sage Instant to gain an accurate VAT rec? Or would you advise me to complete manually until my accountant returns from his Jollies??
I want the accounts to be as accurate as possible, but I also want to complete my VAT rec as accurate as possible. Grrrr?
Unless you're in some scenario whereby the accountant takes your Sage back-up, does what he needs to do and posts his closing adjustments into that back-up before closing the year and then returning it to you to restore into your copy of Sage, then you shouldn't have to wait for him at all.
If that's not the case, then the whole scenario might sound like a strange one - but I've encountered places where it is (or was - until I re-educated both them and their accountants) done that way.
What should happen is that you reach a point after the end of the financial year whereby you say "Okay, this is ready for the accountant." What you then do is prepare any year-end schedules that you normally produce (eg fixed assets, debtors, creditors, etc - if you do any of this yourself), take back-up copies (one of which is for the accountant), tell Sage to do the year-end procedure, and just carry on. When the accountant has used the back-up (and schedules) to produce the final accounts, he should send you an opening trial balance that you can compare with the brought forward trial-balance in Sage to come up with the journals necessary to bring Sage's opening balance figures into line with the accountant's. (Alternatively, he could send you the actual journals, but that just gives him an excuse to charge a little more.)
Meanwhile, you can carry on using Sage as per normal, with no need to wait.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
If you are happy that the balances are correct from your viewpoint then do the year end procedure and balance forward and start posting in financial year 2013.
When the 2012 accounts are finalised ask for opening balance adjustments in order you can bring your balances into line with the signed accounts.
Dont know what your year end is but if it is say 31 December then you should date the journal to recognise as 31 December so when you run the BF TBL it agrees to accountants TBL (only thing need to be careful about is any adjustments to the bank/debtors/creditors/VAT).
Personally I would get the accountant to come out and enter the adjustment themselves to be sure that everything is correct (well thats what i do with my clients).
Totally agree with Mark, and I had the same advice from him when I came on this site for the first time last year if I recall and it all went swimmingly well! In fact I didnt get the adjustments from the Accountant until about 10 months after so Im glad I didnt wait (and when I did get the adjustments I took a backup/wrote out my journal entries before I keyed them to make sure I got them right/keyed them and took a sage backup then checked everything back.)
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
