Post the payment via the bank payments screen to the nominal code for prepayments - usually 1103. That puts the whole thing as being prepaid, so you now need to move 1/12 of it each month from prepayments to car insurance. Go to the bank screen, and click on 'Recurring items'
Add a new transaction and set it up as a journal credit, starting 1st November 2012, for £53.50 (1/12 of £642), from nominal code 1103. For the required number of transactions, enter 12. (The rest of the detail is up to you).
Add a second new transaction - with everything as above except that this time it's a journal debit, and the nominal code to use is the one for car insurance.
You have now entered the insurance payment as prepaid, and set up a recurring transaction to reverse that by 1/12 each month.
Having done that, you may as well click "Process" now at the bottom of the recurring items screen so that it processes those reversals up to date.
When you run Sage each day/week/whatever, if there are any transactions in the recurring items screen that are due to be posted, it will prompt you to let it do so - so, for example, when you first run Sage on or after 1st April, it'll recognise that the April reversal is due to be posted and prompt you.
You could also have posted the payment straight to Car insurance, then posted a journal to prepay 11/12 of it, instead of posting the whole thing to prepayments. Depending on which version of Sage you use, there's also a way to get it to automate such things when you run the month end procedure - but the above is more or less what I do.
For the accrual...
Post the payment to the nominal code for gas (obviously, if you are VAT registered, so that the net amount appears in the nominal code).
Since the period is about a month and a half, you want to accrue 2/3 of the net amount into November:
Post a journal dated 30th November that credits accruals (usually 2109) and debits the code for gas - the amount being 2/3 of the net amount of the bill. That accrues the relevant amount into November.
Now post a journal dated 1st December for the same amount, but this time crediting gas and debiting accruals - that reverses the accrual in the month the bill was raised.
__________________
Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
