I am using Sage and my client year end is 05/04/16 - I am putting on opening baalnces to sage, am I correct in saying that the opening balances are entered 31/03/15
Also between the client and their accountant, they are not definitely sure that the opening balances are correct in regards to creditors.
If there is an opening balance that is not correct, shouldn't be there should I post a credit to the P&L as it shouldn't been included in the profit and loss for the previous year
Hi again
Firstly, a few questions....
- What version (and year) of sage?
- I take it this is a sole trader?
- are the opening balances from the Accountant?
__________________
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
HI
Its the newest version, 2016 v22 I think,
company is a soletrader
Opening balance is from tb but I emailed the journal to accountant to check over but I didn't state the date that I was posting it on ie 31/03/15
Just want to double check as I don't want to have to go back to the accountant and look silly :(
Firstly is his year end definately 5th April? As HMRC will accept anything between 31 March and 5 April as being in that tax year for sole traders? So thats the first thing to double check Im afraid. Better to go back to the Accountants and look silly than cause a nightmare for further down the line. TBH I always find been really honest with them, helps.
If its the 5th - in previous versions of sage you couldnt set up a mid month year end date so the next thing to check is if you can in Sage 2016. If you can then great and you can enter the opening balances on 4th April.
I do suspect that is not do-able so your year end date in sage will be set as 31 March so yes this will be the date to use for the balances. Use the wizards in sage as much as possible to set the opening balances if you are not confident of the journals. Certainly if you use the wizards for the creditors and debtors then you can actually then key any invoices they have as still outstanding at that time, so then your software will effectively map across to the accounts in the old software. Great for when customers pay you / you pay suppliers.
Backup at every stage, check the backups work so you can restore if it is not correct when you have finished. Then you can print a TB and check it to what you have already produced.
Issue then is that anything dated 1-5 April each year will effectively have to be keyed in sage using a 31 March date (with a not to show the actual date on the invoice/source doc) so that it is pulled into the correct year end.
Now the issue of eg creditors possibly not being right you need to be really careful with this. You are entering the TB for a year that should already have been finalised and reported through to HMRC/accounts prepared so they are effectively in lock down and you should not be doing anything to alter the figures pre that year end. Again check with the Accountant as Im making the assumption that his self assessment has been completed on time! You need to pin down the balances so find out where any differences might lie and to be honest the sole trader and his Accountant should really have done this. Good place to start is to get activity prints from all his suppliers (assuming of course that they are all businesses and use a good software to log such things). Obviously statements will only show the current position and not that back in March/April last year.
Hope that helps get you started at least!
__________________
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
