Accounts

Prepare for year end

At the end of your financial year, you need to run the year end routine in Sage 50 Accounts before you can close your current financial year.

Before you do this, it is advisable to do few basic checks to ensure your yearend runs smoothly.

Enter all transactions

Make sure you have posted all transactions for the financial year you’re closing.

These may include:

• Checking that all bank accounts are reconciled, and all unpresented items checked to make sure they are valid.
• Aged Debtors reports checked; any bad debts written off etc.
• Aged Creditor reports checked, any missing invoices or credit notes added etc.
• VAT return run and submitted if VAT quarter coincides with yearend.
• Enter any adjustments from your accountant. These would normally be posted as a journal.
• Run month end routine for depreciation, prepayments and accruals.
• Enter closing and opening stock postings if required.

Check you chart of accounts

The chart of accounts defines which category each nominal code falls.

When the year end is run, the chart of accounts decides which nominal codes to clear down, and which balances to carry forward.  It is therefore important to check the chart of accounts.

To check

1. Click Nominal codes then click Chart of accounts.
2. Select the chart of accounts you want to view and then click Edit.
3. To check for any duplicated or missing nominal codes or if any ranges overlap click Check.
4. If the following message appears “No errors found in this chart of accounts”, you chart of accounts is complete and you are good to carry on.

If prompted to print a Chart of Accounts Error report, you have problems which need to be fixed before you can run the year end.

Run year end reports

Print any management reports you required such as

• Trial Balance
• Profit and Loss
• Balance Sheet

There are various other various other reports you can run, and it is up to you what information you want.  All these reports can be run again from the Archive data once you have run the year end if need.

If you would like help checking your accounts or correcting items before running the year end or need any other help with your Sage Accounts, please contact us

Payroll

Set up and maintain your users

You can easily set up access rights on your software so that different users can log in and help process your payroll.  You can also restrict access to certain areas of the software.

Before any users are set up, there are a few things you need to check:

• You need to log into your payroll with a username that has access to the Access Rights option. The MANAGER username has access by default.
• You can create multiple users by following these steps, however your software licence decides how many users can log in at any one time. In your software click Help, then About to check your user limit.

To set up a new user

Make sure you are logged in as manager.

1. On the menu bar, click Tasks, the click Security.
2. Click Access Rights.
3. In the Users section, click Add.
4. Enter a Logon name and password for the new user.
5. Click

Now you want to give you user specific access rights.  In the table below we have listed the post popular ways to do this.  One you have finished. Click OK.

Restrict access to certain areas of the software – In Allow Access To These Areas: check the boxes for the areas you would like the user to have access to.  Alternatively, click Select All and just de-select the areas you do not want them to access.

Give the user full access rights – In Employee Record Access, select all check boxes, set the access Level to 9 and check the box to Include lower levels.  Then in Allow Access To These Areas, click Select All.

Access to only certain Pay frequency employees – In the Employee Access section, select the required pay element check boxes e.g. Four Weekly

Give the user access based on employee access levels – In Employee Access Level, choose the relevant level up to which the user can access.  The access level is located in the Analysis field of each employee’s record.  By default, each employee’s record has an access level of zero, except for directors who have a level of 9.

For example, if you set the username as level 6, that user can access and process any employees on that level.  If you also select the ‘Include lower levels’ checkbox, this user can access records from level 0 through 6, but not 7 to 9.

Suppress Non-Essential Messaging – select the checkboxes in this section as required to hide non essential messaging for this user.  Leave the checkboxes clear to keep this messaging active.

Login with a different Username

Once you have set up your user, you can easily switch from the current user to a different user.

Simply click File, then click Logout & login with a different username and enter the required username and password, then click OK.

If need help setting up different users or need any other help or advice with your payroll, please contact us

We can also provide a remote access service where we can directly link into your computer to help you resolve your Sage Accounts or Payroll problems.

Accounts

Customer statements

Statements are a great way to let your customers know if they are missing an invoice etc and remind them of any outstanding balances.

It is very easy to create statements for your customers at any time using the Customer module.

Create Customer Statements

1. Click Customers and select the customers you require.
2. From the right-hand side of the toolbar, click Statements.
3. Click Layouts, then select the statement layout you want to use. Please note – Select an “All items” layout to print statements for customers who don’t currently owe you anything.
4. Choose the method you would like to use to generate the statement:

• Preview – Displays the statement on screen.
• Print – Prints a copy of the statement.
• Save to file – You can save your reports and layouts as a file on your computer to access later.
• Microsoft Excel – You can send data to compatible versions of Excel from many of the Sage Accounts windows, just look for the ‘Send to Excel’ buttons.
• Emails – ‘Send documents by email’ through Microsoft Outlook or webmail.

5. Enter the date range you want, and you can also tick to exclude later payments.
6. Click OK.

Memo if you want to select multiple records.

• Window selection style – (Default setting) Use the shift and Ctrl keys to select multiple records.
• Sage selection style – click each individual record to select them.

To change the different selection method

1. Click Tools then click Options and click Environment
2. Click the required List selection style and then click OK.

If you would like help sending out customer statements or customising a layout or need any other help with your Sage Accounts, please contact us

Payroll

Advance Holiday Year Wizard

When you reach the end of your holiday and/or absence year, it is easy to advance the year.  This updates the balance for the new year based on your settings.

Method

You must take car to advance the holiday year correctly, and at the correct time.  When you advance a holiday or absence year you can only undo this by restoring a backup.

Before you change the holiday or absence year end we recommend you take a backup.

1. On the toolbars, click Wizards then click Advance Holiday Year then click
2. To advance the absence year, select the Advance check box.
3. To advance the holiday year, select the Advance check box.
4. Check the dates are correct.
5. Click Finish the click OK.

If you need to return to before you advanced the year for any reason restore a backup to the required point.

If need help setting up a holiday scheme, advancing a holiday or absence scheme or need any other help or advice with your payroll, please contact us

We can also provide a remote access service where we can directly link into your computer to help you resolve your Sage Accounts or Payroll problems.