As you say, the year end procedure clearly hasn't been carried out - for 2011 and 2012 - and the solution to the year end date problem is to do precisely that: process those year ends. However, there is a potential problem that springs to mind, so I'll explain that and a way to check (and resolve) it first.

Since neither of those year ends have been done on Sage, there is a risk that whoever was doing the work before may have entered transactions that are dated prior to each of the year end, but after the data for the year had been sent to the accountants - which means those transactions need to be accounted for in the subsequent year(s). However, just closing down will 'hide' them from Sage's current year - it'll think they've been accounted for simply because they're in the audit trail, dated in the relevant year, before that year is closed.

Given that it was still showing as being in the year to June 2011, the accountant must presumably have produced the 2012 accounts by taking the Sage data and literally subtracting the figures he or she previously had from the 2011 Sage data - and if so, that means any such late transactions in 2011 would have been taken into account in 2012. Therefore, I'm going to assume (even though that makes an ass out of you and me) that's what happened, so I'm going to explain this only for 2012.

So, to check if there are any late transactions (and establish what they are), you need to obtain a copy of the backup that was provided to the accountant to produce the 2012 accounts. Make a backup of the Sage data as it is, and restore that 2012 backup. Make a note of the final transaction number in the financials screen.

Now restore your current backup, and go once again to the financials screen. Click on Search, and on the first line enter:

Where - No - Is greater than - {the final transaction number as noted above}
And - Date - Is less than or equal to - 30/06/2012

If no transactions show up, then great - there were no transactions entered prior to the year end after the year end back up was taken for the accountant. If there are any, though, print them out - you'll need them later.

Now, having done that, to get Sage up to date: Take a couple of backups first, and then perform the year end for June 2011, after which Sage will show the year end as June 2012. Next, repeat the process - another set of backups, and process the year end for 2012. Sage should now think it is in the current year, ending June 2013.

After doing that, you should contact the accountant to ask for the 2012/13 opening balances, and adjust Sage's opening trial balance to match it, because that will almost certainly not have been done either. You only need to do this for the last completed year, because the adjustments affect only the balance sheet.

Now, those late transactions - if there were any.

Depending on what type of transactions they are, you can't just enter them again in Sage - they are still in the history, and you'll potentially mess up certain things: if there is any VAT on them, for example, it almost certainly will have been reflected on a VAT return at some point, so you don't want to account for that twice - but at the same time, the opening balance journals you'll have posted (see above) will probably 'correct' the VAT accounts to figures that were based on balances that didn't include them. Similar problems might crop up with the bank account, or the sales and purchase ledgers.

So you have to look at them intelligently and produce a journal so that the P&L elements are included in this year's P&L. You're going to alter the balance sheet as well - but the opening balances you received from the accountant, since he/she didn't have these transactions, obviously didn't include them. That means when you adjusted Sage's opening balances to the accountant's opening balances, you effectively adjusted these transactions out of the balance sheet - you're now putting them back.

I expect it sounds confusing - and possibly scary - but it just takes a little thought to get it right.