Use of Sage - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

garygpg · Newbie

Use of Sage

EPF_Solutions · Senior Member

I can't comment on recent versions, but I used my own totally different chart of accounts for years with a lot of clients without any problems. You just have to make sure all the control accounts are set up properly.

No doubt someone will say that Sage have changed this since I last upgraded!!!!!

Wella · Expert

I think John hit the nail on the head with theb chart of accounts.

The nominal codes used are not as important as the mapping of the chart of accounts. If the numbers used fall outside the default CoA they will never get picked up.

You may need to customise the CoA to pick up all the codes and place them in the correct area of the P&L and BS. You can run a report to show you which nominals are missing.

HTH

Bill

bro0010 · Senior Member

garygpg wrote:
Hi

If you don't use the Sage default nominal accounts will that cause a problem when you perform the year end procedure ie A/c 3200 for Profit & Loss a/c?

Thanks

Gary

Gary,

Sage gives you flexibility to set whatever account code you want as the retained earnings account under the menu option Settings | Control Accounts.... The default code of 3200 ties in with the standard Sage chart of accounts (COA) offerings, where 3200 is described as "Profit and Loss account". However, you could set up your own COA, with a completely different numbering system, and change all of the control account settings to suit.

My understanding is that Sage uses the "current" chart of accounts (COA) (see the bottom of the Sage COA screen) in determining what is P&L and what is not when you run the year end process (it has to have some way of determining which COA to use if you have multiple charts). It then clears down all the P&L items in the "current" COA to the account number listed for the Retained Earnings control account. The "current" COA may or may not be a COA labelled with the word "default" in its title, or the one listed first in the COA screen. That doesn't mean that you have to actually use that COA day to day. To add to the confusion, I think people often talk about the "default" COA when what they really mean is the COA marked as "current".

That said, it would be most surprising if all COAs defined for your company didn't categorise all P&L items to P&L categories (1-4 and 10 in the background tables) and Balance Sheet items to Balance Sheet categories (5-9 in the background tables). If that's the case, it shouldn't matter which COA happens to be "current" at year end time so long as it passes the COA "check" tests. Always take backups as recommended.

I hope this helps.