did your accountant offer a suggestion as to what the transaction should be ?

is it a subledger (like AP/AR) that is out of balance ?

Hi Roger, thanks for replying.  No he offered nothing but the sting of a large invoice. :)  Apparently the trial balance has been out for several years, and the only suggestion was to contact Sage for support.  They used to have a Utility Support Menu back in the day, when I was a young man with a heart full of dreams and a full head of hair, that would allow a person to enter a one sided adjusting entry in the G/L, presumably to Retained Earnings that would allow for a correction.  Unfortunately, Sage 50 no longer offers support for 'outdated' programs, in this case Simply Accounting 2011 Pro, hence my pathetic plea for a suggestion.  Any suggestion would be a good suggestion at this point.

assuming a year end trial balance, this means that a balance sheet account is out of balance ?

have you identified which account(s) is/are in error ?

Hi Roger, no, the error was caused by a power outage while making an entry several years ago.  I have no idea what it was, and the balance sheet is fine.  The accounts were all closed and transferred into retained earnings at the year ends.  All I'd like to be able to do is a one sided adjusting entry to Retained Earnings.

you say the balance sheet is fine, so assets =  liabilities + equity (proven with a trial balance report)

and retained earnings (both current and prior years) are balance sheet accounts, so they must be correct

if the equation is true, won't an entry to retained earnings create an imbalance ?

if I understand you, the above equation is false, caused by a power fail while creating a transaction involving an income statement account, which at year-end caused the 'retained earnings - previous year' balance to be incorrect

Joe,

Talk with Tony Martin at www.code-six.com.  He should be able to help you out.

Joe

I may be able to help. Give me a call!

Thanks Randy.  Great to talk to you on the phone.  As I indicated, the trial balance is out by such a small amount, I'm unsure if it's even worth fiddling with.  The amount has been consistently out the same amount for the last 8 years, and Accountants have just compensated for it when I hand over my financials at year end.  I was thinking there might be an easy way to open the Utilities Menu, and make a one sided entry in the G/L to correct the error, but it sounds like it may be a little more involved than that.

I suspect the error was caused by a power failure when making an entry way back when, and for some reason, the year closed out that year with the imbalance in the trial balance.

The Sage solution is to 'upgrade to the latest version, and then they'll provide one technical issue call'.  Sheesh, I guess we all have to make a living, but if it's a known issue in a past product, ya' think they'd at least have something available in their on-line knowledge base?