Catch-ups for multiple year ends

SOLVED

Hello,

I've come back to work doing bookkeeping and I have two clients that need their bookkeeping records caught-up, both use Sage 50 Premium (2022).  Their accountant told them to get Sage Accounting, wouldn't have been my choice given the restrictions Sage products have trying to work in prior year records while staying current in the current year.  

Both companies have forged ahead and rolled over fiscal years without actually completing all the posting for those years. There are entries in 2017/2018/2019/2020/2021 right through 2022, the fiscal year end is Oct 31/xx.

Yes! that means nasty notes from CRA (large assessments), gst is messed up, payroll is limping along... neither banks nor credit cards have ever been reconciled, it's a challenge for sure and I'm racking my brain for the best strategy to use if I'm stuck with the Sage restrictions?  Hoping one of the community persons here has a somewhat efficient work-a-round.

I am not looking forward to informing my new boss that it's going to take a LOT more time to get them to current period bookkeeping activities.  They've just spent a whole bunch of money and followed the advice of their Accountant just to get to this point and I am not really hopeful to getting a "no problem, just do this ....'" response from Sage50 support.  Had to ask though :)

Optimistic I'm wrong about the Sage restrictions.  I know why they have them, and it's great if the company has a dedicated bookkeeper, but I don't think they understand some of their small business client's real needs

Thanks for reading, I can't be the only one in this situation especially after the last couple years of chaos.  I see this at few other businesses that are scrambling to get caught-up/restarted or whatever the latest challenge is for small businesses right now.

  • 0

    I see a couple of options.  None of them are particularly nice.

    Before I get to the options, I want to be clear that Sage does definitely still have a hard restriction on data entry.  You can enter into the current fiscal year.  You can enter into the prior fiscal year.  You can enter certain limited items into the next fiscal year.  That's all - no ability to enter into other fiscal years.  Also, payroll is only active for the current and prior calendar year... and I'm not sure off the top of my head if the 2022 or 2023 versions of Sage can calculate payroll correction back into 2017.  I haven't tested it recently.

    So, unfortunately, whatever you do will necessarily be a workaround.

    Option 1:  If you can find good pre-rollforward backups from the October 31 2018 to November 1 2019 roll, and the October 31 2020 to November 1 2020 roll, restore each of those backups in separate databases, eg "Nov 2016 to Oct 2018 data" and "Nov 2018 to Oct 2020 data".  Finish up the bookkeeping for November 2016 through October 2018 in the Nov16-Oct18 database.  Print your corrected trial balance at Oct31, 2018, and your corrected income statement for the year ending Oct31,2018, then move over to your Nov18-Oct20 data set.  Do a general journal entry to fix your opening balances as required, remembering that your income and expense accounts should have an opening balance of zero in all cases...add your 2018 net income to your opening retained earnings.  If you are using inventory, you'll also need to do an inventory adjustment entry.  If you are using accounts receivable or accounts payable, you'll need to use temporary holding accounts for any differences rather than make entries through the related modules.  Then do your Nov18-Oct20 bookkeeping in that data set, and when you're done do a general journal entry to correct the opening balances in your live (Nov2020-Oct2022) database.

    Option 2:  If you don't have good backups, but do have a good trial balance/accounts receivable list/accounts payable list/inventory list/payroll info up to Oct 31 2016, you could do something similar to Option 1, but using a new temporary database for Nov16-Oct18 and another new temporary database for Nov18-Oct20.

    Option 3:  Do all of the Nov2016-Oct2020 catchup completely outside Sage, perhaps in Excel.

    Good luck.

  • +1 in reply to C White
    verified answer

    Thank you for the suggested options, I had an inkling it wasn't going to be easy, seeing it fleshed out in your response definitely helps.  Good news is that I do have good reports for Oct 31/16 FYE.