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Hi, we are wanting to run a trial balance at our year-end, however, it doesn't seem to be picking up our opening balances (e.g. customer - Aged Debtors) that we have imported from our previous Sage system the year before. Are we doing something wrong?
Help!
Regards
Dan
Thank you all for the posts this has been really helpful. I think I will go with he suspense acc route for the control accounts. We have already reconciled banks and added opening balances by posting from bank GLs to sub bank ledgers. This seemed to work fine (with help from the community). So my understanding is I will need to post the opening bank balances again from the TB, between suspense and bank GL to make the banks balance to the TB same as AR/AP (my original question). I am sitting down with accountant next week to sort the TB import, will let you know how it goes :)
Thanks again for your help.
Dan
Hi Steve
I completely agree with you, and as I am playing with BC (I come from a Dynamics GP background), that is the method I will use with implementations.
Regardless of system, you want any control accounts clean and tidy and able to be reconciled back to the sub-ledger. And now that I have been the consulting side of the desk for 15 years, I am no longer surprised how often they are out of whack. When I first starting on the consulting side, from a finance background, I couldn't believe how often I came across it. I had very good teaching - and if my sub-ledger didn't balance to GL, I had to find it. The accountant didn't want to know until I had it balanced.
Cheers
Heather
We prefer to use a suspense account or opening balance account like Daniel suggested above. All the methods discussed will work, but we try to avoid multiple postings into and out of the AR/AP control accounts. When users come to drill down into these accounts, it can look messy with a lot of entries that net to £0.
Typically we will post the opening TB, but instead of posting to the control accounts, put these balances against the suspense accounts. So AP and AR go to suspense (bank also needs dealing with, separate issue on reconciling items!)
Then, when posting the individual opening balances, the posting groups will flow these through to the right place in the GL, but importantly you'll only have one set of entries in the GL for AP/AR, and you'll be able to drill down into the GL balance and see what entries make it up.
Just make sure control accounts in the GL and the sub-ledgers have the same balance :) You might be surprised how often this isn't the case!
Hi Daniel
The first step - importing your ending balance sheet for the period - ignore the fact that anything is a control account. So you might have:
DR Bank $100
DR AR $500
CR AP $300
CR Retained Earnings $300
Without anything going against customer / supplier / bank sub-ledgers, you have a balanced ledger.
Now you need to load against each customer / supplier the transactions that make up those balances. In normal posting, if you post a transaction to e.g. a customer, you would get:
CR Income
DR AR
With opening balances, you are simply needing to record what makes up the initial $500 above. So in this instance, you get:
CR AR
DR AR
The initial GL trial balance - as GL transactions - not customer or supplier - have taken care of the Balance Sheet side.
Cheers
Heather
Hey,
Usually you will load the full TB from your old system, and therefore you will not need to use a 'balancing' account. The full TB from your old system should be in balance (total of all the accounts should zero).
How are you doing the GL opening balance load for the other accounts (bank accounts, inventory, fixes assets, retained earning, etc.)
Regards,
Ben
the basic idea is basically to import AR and AP balances without effecting the general ledger entries, because the general ledger entries' value will be imported during the GL opening balances.
there are two ways you can do to import AR or AP balances:
1) Create journal and post it as normal which will create general ledger entries. You will then need to create a general journal to reverse it only on the general ledger entries side (not the customer or vendor ledger entries)
2) Create journal, but post it to the same account so it will do positive and negative to the same account. You don't need to create reversal journal for this.
sorry...but would you be able to clarify this step:
- It doesn't look like you have imported your GL opening balances. This is usually a separate journal and your closing TB from your old system. This journal will post the opening value of the Debtors Control account.
I have my opening TB from Sage, I have created two G/Ls (see attached), could you confirm the balancing account for the Debtors Control account (AR) and Creditors Control account (AP), will be the 90000 Opening Balances account?
Thanks
Dan
Thanks for the message, so a sperate journal for both AR and AP (and any others ) balancing to a (new) Opening Balance/Suspense (GL). Would this work? Thanks
It looks like you have only posted your Customer opening documents/balances, coded to the Debtors Control account (resulting in the dr and cr to the same account - which is correct).
It doesn't look like you have imported your GL opening balances. This is usually a separate journal and your closing TB from your old system. This journal will post the opening value of the Debtors Control account.
Regards,
Ben
Thank you so much for the detailed response!
To be honest, I am not getting it 100%
- Import GL trial balance as at end of each month (or just end of the period prior to my first period in a new system). Those GL balances include an AR control balance.
So this process is what I did with my Sage 50 closing balance which was - I imported via journal with CR to my Customer Account(s) and DR the Accounts Receivable GL for each customer balance.
- Import AR opening transactions - but I don't want these to add to the AR control total - so I have both the DR and CR to AR control - the in and out.
This is the part I am not clear, is this a new journal entry, if so how would it look in a journal?
Thanks again.
Dan
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