I am new to this forum and relatively new to accounting. Our company uses sage and has done for about 2 years. I learnt the basics but we always had book keepers/ accounts people to ensure everything was running smoothly.
Unfortunately we employed an apparently very experience accounts person (9 years with the NHS) for the last year. When we came to give our books to the accountants to do our annual VAT return it became evident that she did not have a clue what she was doing and had not once reconciled the bank and sage is riddled with mistakes. I should have taken better notice of what was happening but am a bit of a number-phobe so left it to those I thought better qualified.
Having sacked the accounts person I am now struggling to make the bank reconcile and get some sort of order in our accounts so we can do financial projections etc. In 3 weeks I have got from September 2011 to March 2012, however I have now hit a bump as my reconciled amounts do not add up. From looking at previous posts I have discovered that it would appear I have deleted a transaction which I had previously reconciled. (the corrections section is in a massive mess due to numerous duplicated and incorrect transactions). I cannot, however, seem to find the deleted transaction to repost it nor any advice on what I can do to make it right again. If I pull up the reconciled pdf the balance is correct but the opening balance of the next page is less by £142.76.
How can I make it right again?
On another slight note I also have a lot of transactions which are not reconciled but still on sage, can these just be deleted?
I hope someone can help me as it is currently very tempting to delete sage and start it again from scratch!
To make it right again, you need to do what you've obviously started trying to do - identify the transaction that was deleted, enter it again (establishing why it was deleted, so you can do it correctly this time) and mark it as reconciled.
Go to the Financials screen, and click on the 'Search' button at the bottom.
On the first line in the search window, use:
Where, Bank reconciled flag, Is Greater Than Or Equal To, 01/09/2011
On the second line, use:
And, Bank reconciled flag, Is Less Than or Equal To, 31/03/2012 (or whichever date in March you've reached)
On the third line, use:
And, Transaction deleted flag, Is Equal To, Yes
That should show you all the deleted transactions that had previously been bank reconciled in the period you've reconciled. Hopefully, they will add up to your difference (or net off to that value if it's a mixture of payments and receipts).
If it doesn't, you might want to change the dates - for example, change the first one to 01/01/1980 (the dawn of time in Sage terms); that'll bring up bank reconciled transactions from prior years that have been deleted.
Another possibility why the list might not total up to your difference is if this sort of thing has happened before: If someone has bank reconciled a transaction, deleted it, then posted (and reconciled) a correction: That deleted transaction will be in the search results - but judging by what you've said, this probably won't be the case.
With the unreconciled transactions - you have to look at each one individually and decide the best course of action. For example, if you delete a transaction that's a purchase payment, then in doing so you will cause the original invoice to be unpaid on the purchase ledger. Similarly, deleting sales receipts will cause the original sales invoice to become unpaid. (In both cases, this might be correct - if the payment genuinely didn't happen, but there are other scenarios as well.)
Another caveat is transactions outstanding from the previous financial year - delete those and you've changed the bank balance at the last year end.
VAT is theoretically another issue, but Sage won't let you delete a transaction that has been reconciled for VAT.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
Ah, I see I made a little booboo in my original description. I said "Bank reconciled flag" but I meant "Bank reconciled date" - that's what goes in the "Field column".
What you can put in the "condition" column depends on what you put in the "Field" column - with "Bank reconciled flag" the field can only contain specific values, so you only get "is equal to" and "is not equal to".
The same applies to the "Value" column - what you can enter here also depends on the "Field", and for "Bank reconciled flag" you get the three options you mention. "0 - Not applicable" means it's a transaction that doesn't appear on the bank account, and the other two mean it is or is not reconciled.
Putting "Bank reconciled date" in the field column allows more options in the "Condition" column, and means a date has to be entered in the "Value" column.
To get another line, when you've entered the date in the "Value" column, press TAB, or click just below the first line, and the second one will be added, ready for you to set it up as I described.
-- Edited by VinceH on Tuesday 14th of August 2012 11:35:36 AM
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
Thank you very fore your help! however I have a couple of problems:
I have located the search button and inputted 'join' & ' bank reconciled Flag', however I dont have greater than or equal to, I have either 'is equal to' or 'is not equal to' and in the 4th column I have '0 - not applicable' '1 - reconcilled' & '2 - unreconcilled' so cannot put in a date.
I have tried inputting is equal to reconcilled but no results were brought up.
There is also only one line and no section to put in the dates. I apologise I am a complete novice at sage.
sorry to hear you had such problems Naomi, nice to note you have now got around the problem with help of Vince. In case useful to you in future we charge only by the hour (quarterly after first hour) and bank reconciles are an area will often fill for companies ensuring they can employ staff for data entry side.
Hopefully you'll now be on top of things to continue forward.
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Donna Curling - Complete Book-Keeping Ltd (CBKLtd) - 07939 101900
Hi, Can someone help as I am in a very similar boat and boy is it a messy one!
Previous accounts/office manager on maternity leave as not bank rec'd since last September - I took over a month ago.
The trouble is I've noticed numerous duplications etc and initially I thought to just delete these entries or cancel out using 9999 code but... they have been VAT reconciled! even though the bank has never been rec'd! Help me please as I can't delete any entries and I have no idea how to cancel them out!
We have an accounts team who work for us out of house and they have been notified of the problem but they are not quick to get back to us, despite being paid nearly 3 hundred a month for their service!!
I just need to know how to sort this out as all my expenses accounts, credit card accounts and petty cash are showing up as red on bank and I assume this is because they have not been reconciled.
I have tried to bank rec correctly and my figure for September is £-4.51 out. Which although it doesn't sound like the end of the world is incredibly difficult to work out.
The easiest way to get rid of duplicated entries if they have already been vat reconciled is to do an entry the opposite to the incorrect one so for example if the entry was a payment in materials ( so debiting materials, crediting bank) you would do a receipt to that account using exactly the same vat code and amount as the incorrect entry (debiting bank, crediting materials) use the same date too.
Just wanted to say thanks ever so much and I have managed to rec the bank.
However, I have a query as to why my expenses accounts, credit card and petty cash are coming up as red on the bank screen when I have managed to rec the bank?
Please help - surely these should be set to zero now?
The bank accounts won't show as zero unless there is no money in there! What you are doing by reconciling the bank is matching your Sage (or cash book) balance to the actual bank account balance, allowing for items that haven't been deposited or paid out yet. The reason your accounts are showing red could be that there is a "minimum balance" set in the bank record or your bank accounts are overdrawn. Check the bank record (highlight the bank account, click on Record and check the minimum limit under the Balance section, and set it to zero). This way the bank account shouldn't show red unless it is overdrawn. The credit card account will always show red if there is a balance on it as it will be in credit.
Bit confused when you say your "expenses accounts" are showing red on the bank screen....there shouldn't be any expenses accounts on the bank screen. Expenses accounts will only be in the nominal ledger. (Unless you mean employees' expenses?)
What you are doing by reconciling the bank is matching your Sage (or cash book) balance to the actual bank account balance, allowing for items that haven't been deposited or paid out yet. The reason your accounts are showing red could be that there is a "minimum balance" set in the bank record or your bank accounts are overdrawn. Check the bank record (highlight the bank account, click on Record and check the minimum limit under the Balance section, and set it to zero). This way the bank account shouldn't show red unless it is overdrawn. The credit card account will always show red if there is a balance on it as it will be in credit.
