Touchstone said:

Can I make a journal entry to close rev/exp to retained earnings prev year?

Yes, you would post this on Oct 1/20.

However, it may be simpler.  Is the file still in History Mode?  ie. do you still have a History menu?

Touchstone said:

but instead of entering starting balances on last day of previous fiscal, they were entered first day of current -1Oct2020

For others reading these messages, this is not the problem.  Most people never think to enter the previous year's ending balances on the last day of last year (almost always my preference).  They normally just enter them on the first day of the new year.

The problem here is the person who did the data entry did not know to use the Retained Earnings account for the balances of all Income and Expense accounts as well as the balance of the Retained Earnings account when starting on the first day of the next year.

Hi Richard,

Yes the file is still in history mode.  

Would the best approach be to generate a report to ensure there were no other journal entries made on the first day of the fiscal, then pull an Income Statement for that day only (to capture all the revenue and expense balances), then create a general journal entry dated Oct 1 reversing each balance out of the account and into retained earnings?

When in History mode, assuming the original opening G/L balances were not entered as a journal entry(s), then you can go to Setup, Setup Guide, Accounts and reset the applicable original opening balances for the income statement to zero and put the balance in Retained Earnings.

Your suggestion of figuring out what was the Income statement for Oct 1 and removing any journal entries sounds like a lot of work and makes me believe you don't actually know what the opening balances actually are.  When I set up a file, I have the closing balances of the previous bookkeeping system (even if it is just another company file in Sage 50) and the reports from Sage 50 after I entered the opening balances to prove I entered them correctly.  I would just return to those reports and make the adjustments necessary because I already know the numbers.

In your case, if the opening balances were entered so that you can see them in the Setup Guide, then you know the opening balances as well and can make the adjustments there.  Your Retained Earnings should match the accountant's year end figures if you include the net profit from last year.