Maybe I missed something… I do understand that Manager does not require you to “Close” the accounts for each financial year.
So if I want to create a “General ledger Report” for my 2nd Financial Year, I simply select that time period when creating the report. Correct so far…?
This will all work fine for P&L accounts (as all transactions prior to the start date should be ignored), BUT my Balance Sheet account does not show the incoming balance (which I think they ought to).
Surely there must be some way to get this included, but I have tried all settings I can find but nothing seems to work.
Actually, if I set another “start Date” from the settings menu (i.e the start of my 2nd financial year/period), the Balance Sheet accounts “goes crazy” in the General Ledger Transactions Report…
Start Date should only be set once. It’s only purpose is to set the opening balances - useful when you transfer data from another accounting software.
Balance Sheet contains information about balances of accounts on a certain date. You should only specify the date up to which you’d like to see those account balances.
Please define “incoming balance”. I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve.
The General Ledger Summary report shows “what’s been happening” within a specified period. It’s a summary of transactions for each account, quite different from balance sheet.
In other accounting software, “closing” the accounts simply means return “balances” of all profit & loss account balances to zero for a specified period. Manager uses exactly the same concept: when you specify the P&L start date, Manager ignores all the P&L transactions takes place before that date.
Don’t change your Start Date. The purpose of that is to allow you to make the transition from a previous accounting system to Manager, in other words, to carry over account balances. If you start using Manager from the beginning of your business, you do not need to set that date at all.
You are correct that there is no need to close income and expense accounts for previous years. Resetting the period on the Summary page accomplishes the same thing for monitoring purposes. And creating new reports, such as the Profit and Loss Statement, does the rest.
Balance sheet accounts are permanent. That is, they carry forward from year to year. If you were operating your business prior to adopting Manager, you should enter starting balances as of your Start Date, taking the numbers from your previous system on the last day of its use.
Starting balances for bank and cash accounts are set when you create the accounts. You can go back and edit them. Starting balances for fixed assets and accumulated depreciation are set when you enter the individual assets. Credit balances for customers and suppliers are set when they are created. Accounts receivable and accounts payable are entered by actually generating sales and purchase invoices, but only for ones that are still outstanding on your Start Date. Be sure to enter their actual issue dates (prior to the Start Date) so they don’t get double-counted.
That covers the major ones. If you have other specific questions on setup, please ask.
I must have been unclear… I’m sorry. All the above is clear…
I’m just referring the the “General Ledger Transactions” report. If you select a specific period for such report, it presently shows all transactions in the accounts, both in P&L account as well as Balance Sheet accounts.
For P&L accounts this is logical and well, but I miss an “opening balance” in this report (as per the start of the selected period) for the Balance Sheet accounts.
The General Ledger Summary report shows this, but it would be very useful to have the same in the more detailed transaction report. It would then be a great report for audit purpose when reviewing a specific audit period (like a certain financial year)…
Yes, that is by design. This is a transactions report, intended to show debits and credits during a defined period. The sums of the two must match. Adding opening and/or closing balances would defeat the purpose of the report. That is why there is a separate General Ledger Summary report.