Sage and Year End Date Fiasco

Hollysan

Hello everyone,

Hoping someone might know something about this. I have a client, small limited co., who called me in to do book-keeping and accounts for them last year. They wanted to use the Sage Instant Accounts package they had bought, even though my experience of Sage was limited. I have gradually got to grips with Sage, and we are now approaching the year end, with one months worth of transactions still to be inputted. Starting this today, when i input the date of the transaction, a window appeared telling me it was outside the year end.

On investigation of the company settings (the programme was loaded and settings done by client) it seems that this is because they set Jan 09 as the start date, so as Sage runs to a twelve month period, the year end as far as the programme is concerned, is 31 Dec 09. Co. House year end required is 31 Jan, as company incorporated in Jan.

Sage say there is no way for us to change the year end, and the choice is a) upgrade to Sage 50 Or b) Pay £147.50 plus VAT for Sage to change year end, and the programme would be out of use for 5 working days. Not ideal.

Client spoke to someone who uses Sage who suggested that you can override the date and input the transaction. Would I be right in thinking this wouldn't work; i.e the year end would still be 31 Dec? I am disinclined to force it and create a bigger problem.

Client very unhappy with Sage and not thrilled about spending the money on having them correct the year end, but I am not sure there is an alternative.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance...

Hollysan

burg

I'm not sure on instant as I use line 50 in which it can be done.

You could try asking on the Sage forum http://www.sageforum.co.uk/

Sorry I can't be of much help

sheelagh

Sage year end

I don't often use Instant. Will you ever be able to change the system to work to a 31st Jan year end using your existing data? If you want to continue using this software, with all the historical data in the same Sage file, it might be worth spending the money to get Sage to do the job.
Alternatively you could finish the current year (I will explain later), take a backup of the data, then ReBuild the data which will allow you start afresh with the correct year end. You can restore your old data if you ever need to look at it, or install it on a separate PC so you have easy access to it. You can then record the opening balances at 1/2/10.
Cost-wise, it might not cost much more to buy the latest version of Sage Instant, which will probably come with one year's support, and install it alongside the exisitng version. I believe it is possible to have two versions of instant on one PC, although you can't have them both open at the same time. Your old data would then be handy if you need to look at it.
To finalise the current year you need to add the figures for the period 1/2/09 -31/12/09 to the Jan 10 figures. If you run the Sage year end procedure at 31/12/09 the system will generate a year end journal (you get a once only opportunity to print this - it's called "ledger Year End"). This journal will clear out all the profit and loss accounts and post the resulting entry to P&L account 3200. Post this journal in reverse on 1/1/10 to add the figures back in to your correct year. Complete your work to 31/1/10 and run a TB etc - this will be your true year end figures.
To support the above, I would suggest you run a full audit trail report, nominal activity report, for the period 1/2/09 -31/12/09 , run a bank reconciliation report and debtors and creditors at 31/12/09, and take plenty of backups before you run the year end procedure. If it goes wrong, restore your backup and try again.

Dcollins

Sage year-end

I think this is a very common problem, and I had to sort it out last year for a client with Instant Accounts, but I had to back-up their data to a USB drive, restore it to my Sage 50, sort the thing out, then restore back to their Instant.

I would hate to have to do it again.

You can only change the year-end when there are no transactions in the program. From memory, what I did was everything Sheelagh advised in her last paragraph, then print a trial balance.

Next run and save extended csv files of customer details, suppliers, nominal ledger, audit trail (also do stock records, stock transactions and project records if relevant).

Then rebuild to get rid of all the data. You should now be able to change the date.

Then individually import each csv file.

Check trial balance agrees with the one you printed earlier. Mine didn't so I had to check the audit trail reports, and discovered one transaction was missing, so input it manually.

You may find that in customer and supplier accounts the payments and receipts are no longer allocated to invoices, so you or your client will need to do this.

Can't be done in Instant without Sage's help, so you will need Sage 50.

Good luck, and please let us know how you get on.

Hasan.Ahmet

Sage instant year end

With Sage Instant you don't have the option of changing y.e end once set.
My own experience.

A-Vic

Hasan.Ahmet wrote: »

With Sage Instant you don't have the option of changing y.e end once set.
My own experience.

Same as for instant accounts all you can do is continue till y/e then journal out after any entries put in proir year start

coojee

"Sage say there is no way for us to change the year end, and the choice is a) upgrade to Sage 50 Or b) Pay £147.50 plus VAT for Sage to change year end, and the programme would be out of use for 5 working days. Not ideal."

You've been given some good suggestions as to how to correct this yourself. But think about how long it will take you to do it and how much you'd have to charge the client. It may work out cheaper for him to pay Sage to do it.

Hollysan

Sage Year End Fiasco - Sorted

Hello everyone,

Thanks very much for all your replies. I thought long and hard about this one, and the thought of attempting to resolve it myself was not appealing - I am no expert on Sage. So, I followed Burg's suggestion and went to the Sage forum. There is a 'Services Offered' section where I found a developer who was able to fix the problem for half the cost Sage were charging AND he did it within two hours of me emailing him the data. End of problem. It was definitely worth it.

This is obviously a common problem as DCollins says, and if you don't have Sage50 you can't sort it yourself. But at least there is an alternative to paying Sage to do it. And I am really pleased to have discovered the Sage forum, so thanks, Burg for the tip.

Thought I would tell you how this was resolved - could be useful for someone. I am now back in my comfort zone working on the client's accounts! Thanks again.
Hollysan

deanshepherd

What was the developers name/details?

Might be handy for future reference..

mc25

Hollysan, Like dean says it could be handy having the contact, pls share with us the developers details for future reference.
Thanks

AK002

Hollysan wrote: »

Hello everyone,

Thanks very much for all your replies. I thought long and hard about this one, and the thought of attempting to resolve it myself was not appealing - I am no expert on Sage. So, I followed Burg's suggestion and went to the Sage forum. There is a 'Services Offered' section where I found a developer who was able to fix the problem for half the cost Sage were charging AND he did it within two hours of me emailing him the data. End of problem. It was definitely worth it.

This is obviously a common problem as DCollins says, and if you don't have Sage50 you can't sort it yourself. But at least there is an alternative to paying Sage to do it. And I am really pleased to have discovered the Sage forum, so thanks, Burg for the tip.

Thought I would tell you how this was resolved - could be useful for someone. I am now back in my comfort zone working on the client's accounts! Thanks again.
Hollysan

I hope you asked the client before sending the data...?

Hollysan

Hello everyone,

Yes, I did ask the client for his permission. And I did two downloads, one on a memory stick and one on his hard drive. It was a bit scary, not having done it before, and being a Sage Virgin (so to speak!) but worked out OK.

The only reason I didn't mention the developer's name was because I wasn't sure of the ethics with that one. So, just to be clear, I have no connection with him, but his name is John Donnelly. Actually he is a moderator and obviously heavily involved with, the Sage Forum - user name is Arcam (like the hi-fi) but his main activity is obviously as a developer working on Sage add-ons. Not very good at links but here goes:


http://sageforum.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=18Sage.

Just in case it doesn't work, go to the list of topics and scroll down to the last one 'services available' then find the post titled 'Final Year Changes/data fixing' posted by Arcam, and he's your man.

Sage Forum very interesting; too interesting, wish I had time to read all the posts...

Hollysan