Hi, I`ve been asked to reinstate the entire 12 months worth of transactions for a business using Sage, and at the same time have a new year end.They want the first trading period to be between 26.04.06 and 30.06.07 i.e 14 months. Will this be OK with Sage, because at the Company setting stage you are asked for the commencement of the financial year, and then it seems to assume it will be 12 months from that date. How do I persuade it to accept 14 months, if indeed I can??
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!
Paul
paul conway
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Pretend
or fudge (I don't like using that phrase, but it's true).
If the new y/e is 30.6.07, I would say that the year started 1.7.06 and post anything prior to that date with the date 1.7.06, putting the actual date in a memo field.
Difficult to change year end
Unless you buy one of the more expensive Sage accounts packages, changing the year end is difficult, if it is at all possible. You would need to speak to Sage helpline, and they may charge a fee to do it for you.
Changing the year end
This may be possible and providing that you have not already processed your year end function.
Firstly you need to see if it is possible on your version of Sage, if you can change the financial year, via the settings & financial year function.
Assuming that you can, ensure you backup your data. Then via the above function change the financial year start date to July 06. This will then produce a year end of 30 June 07.
The problem now is producing a set of accounts for a 14 month period!
From the Financials module choose Reports then Profit & Loss Reports. You will need to produce a Transactional Profit and Loss Report for the whole 14 month period.
If you do not have the Transactional Profit & Loss Report, then try this one. Financial Reports/Trial Balance Reports/ Transactional Trial Balance, and again staring the 14 month period.
from either of these two reports it is possible to create your own P&L and BS.
If all does not go well, then simply restore from your backup. Good luck.
Only 12 months allowed
Sage only allows 12 month periods but they will change the year end for you if you either pay them/have support contract/have a certain program.
One way would be to have the year end two months into the 14 month period and then the next year for the remaining 12 months. You can then add the two sets of accounts together for the profit and loss account.
all of which only goes to prove.......
..........what a limited and inappropriate set of products Sage actually is for small companies. (whether is is unlimited and appropriate for medium or larger companies I will leave to others to comment on)
Unbelievable that this is a FTSE 100 company - it's surely a dinosaur in terms of its product capabilities and platforms ?
No, I have absolutely NO connection with, or interest in, any of its competitors.
And no, I have no personal or vested interest whatever in Sage's future demise or success.
It is simply an out-of-date business model with an out-of-date product range set of capabilities that really must reinvent itself fast if it is to have hope of survival, let alone continuation of past dominance.
The IBM principle - or I guess the Microsoft principle these days as a more up to date example - (I dominate because I am dominant) ultimately has a finite shelf-life.
Change year end
If you have Sage Instant it is not possible to change the year end date in the system. One way to resolve this is to set up two sets of date (two companies) - one for the first two months of your period, then another for the year starting 1/7/06.
If you have a product which will allow a year end date change it will be simpler.
You are stuck with a maximium 12 month accounting period.
I would enter the first two months, run a TB etc at the that point, take backups then close the year. This will clear all the P&L balances to the P&L account.
Next, reinstate all the P&L account balances by journal dated 1/7/06. (If you are doing this using Sage Instant option mentioned above you can also enter opening balances for sales and purchase ledger accounts)
This method will enable you to produce a full TB etc for the full 14 months.
Sheelagh
To be fair to Sage
How I hate saying that, because I agree with Martin that Sage Line 50 is a crap product, but the one inflexible feature of most competitive bookkeeping products is the accounting date and hence, that the accounts cover a year and nothing more.