I'm new to the forum and glad to find somewhere to bounce ideas/ask questions with other Bookkeepers. I have some questions to do with Sage Instant which I hope someone might be able to help.
I have taken on a new client and previous bookkeeper is nowhere to be seen. The clients financial year started in August and he wants me to do the month end process which was not done for August or September. I'm happy doing this in Sage 50 but not so comfortable with Sage Instant so here goes.
1) A customer credit note has been issued for a invoice raised and paid for in the previous financial year which has been closed off so the customer account is showing a negative balance. Not sure if I can go into to the intial payment transaction and cancel/delete it because the year end was done or whether to raise a new invoice to cancel out the credit note that was raised in the new year.
2) Since it is already October how do I change the month end date in Sage Instant to run the month end process for August and September? The month end box that comes up has the default month of October and can't be changed (not drop box to change month or enter date). Is it ok to just run the month end even though it says October or should I just want till the end of October and start closing the months from there on? Basically, just want to clear the MTD as the debtors MTD figure on the Balance Sheet is showing a negative amount which will only confuse the client.
3) The audit trail and activity on all the accounts is showing transactions going back several years which I want to tidy up for the client and to make investigation work easier for me. It looks like the audit trail has never been clear after the year end processes where done. Is it a simple process to clear the audit trail for each of the previous years now or am I going to cause myself unexpected problems?
Sorry for all the detailed questions and many thanks
"1) A customer credit note has been issued for a invoice raised and paid for in the previous financial year which has been closed off so the customer account is showing a negative balance. Not sure if I can go into to the intial payment transaction and cancel/delete it because the year end was done or whether to raise a new invoice to cancel out the credit note that was raised in the new year."
If the credit note has been raised, but the invoice has already been paid, then the negative balance is correct - presumably, the credit note was raised as a result of a problem the customer had, and will either be offset against a future invoice, or an amount will be refunded. Check with your client to see what the situation is before simply clearing the account.
"2) Since it is already October how do I change the month end date in Sage Instant to run the month end process for August and September? The month end box that comes up has the default month of October and can't be changed (not drop box to change month or enter date). Is it ok to just run the month end even though it says October or should I just want till the end of October and start closing the months from there on? Basically, just want to clear the MTD as the debtors MTD figure on the Balance Sheet is showing a negative amount which will only confuse the client."
No, if you just run the month-end as it is, it will only run the month-end for the month that's showing (or at least it used to, unless Sage have changed things to be more sensible) - which is by default the month you are currently in. To get it to show August, you need to change the date so that you're in August, and likewise for September.
To do this look on your Settings menu - one of the options is "Change program date".
"3) The audit trail and activity on all the accounts is showing transactions going back several years which I want to tidy up for the client and to make investigation work easier for me. It looks like the audit trail has never been clear after the year end processes where done. Is it a simple process to clear the audit trail for each of the previous years now or am I going to cause myself unexpected problems?"
Yes, it's straightforward enough. Make sure you take a full back-up, obviously, before doing so. Personally, I like to keep the transactions live for at least the two previous years, but YMMV. (BTW, you don't have to do it for each of the years you want to get rid of in turn, which it looks like you were thinking of doing - you could simply do it for all transactions up to any given date, in one go.)
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
1. The invoice was raised and paid in the previous financial year but the credit note has been raised and refund issued in the new financial year so not too confident what to do about clearing the negative balance. The problem is that the previous bookkeeper and the client open a new customer account for every single sale whether a one off customer or not. In this case this is a one off customer account so not like to offset the credit note against any future purchases.
2. I will try going through the settings/change program date as it is an old version of Sage Instant so suspect it will only run the month end for October. Thanks for the tip.
3. Great to know I can clear it in one go. The Audit trail goes back to 2006 and I only want from 2011 to present.
