Can I archive previous years’ financial statements? ie do a year end procedure that will clear previous years’ entries and leave only the balance sheet items? As one can do in other accounting software.
Manager is a continuous accounting system so that is not done.
To achieve the equivalent see these guide
Close an accounting period
Set lock date
Set reporting period
Not sure about that as many use open and closing periods, where Manager uses as open period the start date when entering transactions in the program and uses lock dates to avoid changes in transactions. So in essence it does the same thing as you can still generate all the financial reports over selected periods but can not change the amounts in P&L before lock date.
In addition many jurisdictions have requirements to keep accounts 5, 7 even 10 years active. A perpetual system (also Oracle Finances, SAP, and Sage products) enables this for the lifetime of a business.
Thank you eko. I used to use MYOB. At financial year end, it cleared all the year’s transactions and transferred the end result to the balance sheet, which was carried forward into the new financial year. I had hard copies if needed, so didn’t need the electronic records. It just kept the file smaller and more compact. I do understand how to lock dates to get a single year’s financial statements.
Thank you Patch. I do understand those guides. It’s just that the file is getting bigger and bigger with more and more years added. Otherwise, I find it an excellent program and, as a small business, am very grateful for the free download version.
If filesize would become a problem (some of our businesses have thousands of entries each month for several years and no even 80MB
in size) then you can consider to create a full back-up after each year. Then create a new backup for the next new year but uncheck the History, Email, and Attachments see below image, and you will see that the file-size drastically reduces. Whenever you need for auditing purposes need to have a complete version just import the backup you made earlier.
You can experiment with for example only not saving the history and email but keeping the attachments. In reality I do not think that file-size will be a great problem though as storage is cheap and Manager pretty efficient.
That might have been an issue years ago, when files were kept on floppy disks. Honestly, I have individual spreadsheets and text documents that are larger than any of my Manager data files, even after years.
Besides, archiving financial statements is (a) not possible and (b) would have almost undetectable effects on file size. Financial statements (and other reports) are not saved as you see them when viewing them. Only their definition parameters are stored. The actual financial statements are produced on the fly, in real time, every time you view one. You can delete them all and recreate them whenever needed.