Help re Sage 'error' warning - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

Cheshire · Master Book-keeper

Help re Sage 'error' warning

Cheshire · Master Book-keeper

Bumping this in the hope someone can help, please.

Leger · Master Book-keeper

Hi Jo

I can see that the £828 has been attached to 3 invoices totaling £732, so where should the other £96 have gone? It's weird that Sage never flagged up when you entered the transaction because my understanding (which could be wrong) was that you matched the receipt against invoices due. Also, what does the cl006a represent, as there is a big leap in invoice numbers from the previous two.

Is it too late to allocated the £96 to something, as presumably the £828 payment was correct, which if it was, makes the VAT correct? (image 1 shows the nett and VAT correct, but then only shows £732 as paid)

Just my thoughts, which probably won't help you, but hopefully might.

RobH · Expert

I notice on the first image that it says £828 foreign gross, was there any currency exchange rate set up?

VinceH · Expert

The third image answers that - it is showing £96 on sales receipt as not yet allocated against an invoice.

That is very odd - as Joanne said in her original post, you'd normally expect that to show up on a separate line as an SA (with a prompt at the point of posting to say there was still £96 to allocate which will be posted as a payment on account - and the prompt for a tax code if on a cash basis for VAT).

I've never before seen a partially unallocated receipt appear the way it has in those screen shots. The only thing I can think of that could conceivably cause it is if the other £96 was previously allocated against another invoice, and (perhaps) that invoice has been deleted or modified in some way which caused the payment to be deallocated from it.

How to resolve it is another matter - but I think investigating the cause is the starting point, so is there any indication of anything like my speculation having happened?

VinceH · Expert

Rob: That's a red herring. Sage uses that field even for sterling transactions, which happen to have a 1:1 exchange rate with the base currency in use, which also happens to be sterling. If you see what I mean.

RobH · Expert

Hi Vince, that's what I thought but odd that the full amount is on the Gross Foreign but shows as £96 less in the paid box despite a 1:1 exchange rate. Very curious.
It may be worth running a detailed audit trail around the date or the transaction number to see if anything comes to light?

Cheshire · Master Book-keeper

Hi Guys
Thanks for your suggestions so far, although have to say Im none the wiser and still scratching my head on this one.

As Vince says the 'foreign gross' is just a red herring, although I did a double take on that one too Rob. The other red herring is the weird invoice reference Cl006 (way before my time) and the fact there is a massive gap between invoice/sage references on the against the payment. What was weird though was that whilst the net and tax boxes add up to £828, the actual VAT is a few pounds out (it should be £138 and shows as £141.90!!!)

Ive run a detailed audit report which shows deleted transactions and there are non on it for this debtor. Ive also run the 'deleted transactions' report from the Audit trail option and whilst there are some deleted's on there there are absolutely none that I can track back to being possibly related to this transaction. Most are before my time, the odd one Ive done since is fully documented on a file I keep and were all before the keying period of this error and dont come close with the amounts.

The only bit of paper Im missing (bloomin annoying as Ive been to the clients today) is the actual remittance advice to see which of the hundreds of invoices on this debtor that the other £96 relates to. (in the vein hope its as Vince says, although I suspect it shouldve been a payment on account as one that couldnt be allocated, as I always mark up the remits with the SI numbers from sage before keying as the payments bounce around all over the hundreds of invoices and it just makes it easier once Im keying, but not now having the remit means I cannot check if Ive done something odd.)

Im truly flummoxed! Any other ideas folks? Would be very much appreciated.

Jo
PS the corrections screen will not allow me to allocate more against this customer receipt! In fact if I go into the Bank / Customer payments screen it isnt showing as needing allocating!!!!!
PPS I could do a restore, but I would prefer not to if it can be avoided - whilst there are only about 80 transactions they are all the flippin fiddly rubbish ones just before you finish the VAT return off! Ie loads of cards trans across several cards/recs etc.

-- Edited by Cheshire on Monday 27th of April 2015 06:29:27 PM

VinceH · Expert

I can understand why you think that, but things aren't what they seem; it's unclear labeling on Sage's part.

Look at that screenshot and, in your head, imagine that the "Paid" box is labelled "Allocated" instead. That's what it means in the context of either a purchase payment or sales receipt (or, in either case, a payment/receipt on account).

For a normal sales receipt or purchase payment, fully allocated when input, the "Paid" box contains the same as the "Foreign gross" box.

For a Payment/Receipt on account, the "Paid" box starts off at 0.00 - if you subsequently allocate them to a payment, the total amount allocated ends up in this box until you've fully allocated the payment/receipt. (See for yourself if you use Sage - fire up the practice data, and enter a sales receipt or purchase payment without allocating it, then look at the transaction via the corrections screen).

Therefore, the reason that box is £96 less than the "Foreign gross" box is because £96 of the receipt is unallocated - even though that shouldn't happen under normal circumstances AFAIK.

As I said further up, my best guess would be an allocated but subsequently deleted invoice. However, I've just loaded Sage's practice data, and it won't allow me to delete an invoice that "has been allocated against a receipt and VAT calculated" - and I can't think of another way to cause part of a SR transaction to be left unallocated.

The payment itself can be deallocated (by my old trick of changing it to a different account, then changing it back) - but that also changes it to a SA.

So my previous theory that it may have become partly deallocated is out the window.

Joanne: I think you may need to contact Sage¹ under your Sagecover agreement (if you have one) - unless someone like Bruce has any other ideas.

Just did a quick search for the error and found this page on Sage's site², which may or may not be helpful.
Which, incidentally, illustrates another level of Sage's incompetence. I run without Javascript enabled on most sites - Sage isn't one I have it on for by default. When I click through to that page, I can see the information I'm looking for, the main body text, briefly before I get redirected to an error page informing me that "In order to access this page, you must have a JavaScript-enabled browser and have JavaScript turned on." I clearly don't Sage - without your unnecessary check/redirect, I WOULD BE ABLE TO ACCESS THAT PAGE. Muppets.

Edit: Forgot to set the references to the footnotes as superscript.

-- Edited by VinceH on Monday 27th of April 2015 09:39:57 PM

Cheshire · Master Book-keeper

Hi Vince
What a star!!
Apologies Ive not come back to you sooner as I was out yesterday and have only just had the chance to have a look at this! The client didnt have sage cover, but that link you found was the key. I used the recovery tools (their laptop must have Javascript as I accessed the link easily!) and hey presto the unallocated amount was back there on the customer account so I could link it to the appropriate invoice. All very odd how it happened in the first place, but clearly one Sage have had problems for in that the recovery tool is there for anyone to use without needing to resort to use of sage cover (phew) so in the end it got sorted. I was too busy flapping around thinking about re-keying, whereas your calm found the solution. So massive thanks.

VinceH · Expert

Glad it solved the link.

On the Javascript comment: It's not that their laptop has Javascript - Javascript is a browser technology, and the big name web browsers used by most people (Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera) all have Javascript.

I also use one of those day to day (Firefox) but unlike most people I deliberately disable Javascript on the basis that it's a security risk, slows things down and causes the browser to require more resources.

For some websites I need to have Javascript enabled. Typically these are sites that are more interactive - sites where you want to do more than just read the content; shopping sites, bank sites, things like that. I configure my system so that it is enabled for those sites I decide I need it for.

On other sites, generally it doesn't matter - if they are just presenting information for me to read, there should be no need for Javascript. And most of the time, that works well. Not only that, but it's also beneficial in that just by having Javascript disabled means I don't see quite a lot of annoying advertisements!

That page of Sage's clearly was one with basic content for reading, and shouldn't really need any Javascript. Sage's divert to another page that insisted I did need Javascript just shows Sage up for the twits they are.

It may even put them in breach of the disability discrimination act - there was a lot of fuss in the late 1990s/early 2000s about whether websites should provide basic functionality and accessibility without such frivolities, but I'm not sure what the outcome was; whether it *is* a legal requirement or not. (The DDA is - hence the 'A' for 'Act' - it's whether things like this are in contravention I'm not sure of!)