I’ve finished the balance sheet & profit & loss account reports for May-17 and wants to put all account balances to this accounting software. I’ve successfully put the accout balances of May-17 to Manager’s balance sheet items but don’t know how to put balances to Manager’s profit & loss account items.
Anyone can help ?
Thanks
You can’t put in account balances for profit & loss accounts.
You put the net value of the profit & loss accounts into Equity - Retained Earnings
Thanks for your reply. But my company’s year end is on 31-Jan-17. 1-Feb-17 to 31-Jan-18 is the new financial year. The resigned accounting staff finished the Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet up to 31-May-17. I put the balance sheet’s account balances as at 31-May-17 to this accounting software except profit & loss items. As per your previous reply, the profit & loss report for further months(i.e. Jun, Jul, Aug 17… Jan-18) cannot show the data from 1-Feb-17 to 31-May-17. How can this problem be solved ?
Thanks
- You can continue using the old accounting system until a new accounting year starts.
- You can maintain the old records for the first portion of the year, using Manager for the second portion. To do this, enter the net in Retained earnings as @Brucanna suggested. You will have to contend with possibly jumping back and forth between systems for the rest of the year.
- You can re-enter all transactions from the first 5 months in Manager.
This situation points out why companies typically wait until the end of a financial period to switch accounting systems.
Thanks for your reply.
It seems that option 2 is the most simplest way to do.
You could just enter a single Journal Entry for each of the previous months.
So for the month of Feb create a Journal of the months P&L balances with the Journal balance going to Retained Earning, then repeat for Mar etc.
The one proviso here would be that the Retained Earning opening balance should be as at Jan 31, then each Journal will bring it up to the current Retained Earnings value.
(Or, one Journal for the whole 4 months.)
To : Brucanna
Thanks again for your reply.
I’ve already made one journal entry to put all the P & L closing balances of 31-May-17 to the software. It seems that the report of P & L is normal now but the balance sheet report has a special item named 'Starting balance equity". I know this item is the prrofit / (loss) for the period of 1 Feb,17 to 31 May,17. Since this item cannot be generated to the Accumulated Profit / (Loss) in balance sheet, I’m afraid of this item will be carried forward to next financial year.
I attached the jpg files of the journal entry, balance sheet & P & L for your reference.
Would you give me any suggestion ?
Thanks.
As advised in my first post - The one proviso here would be that the Retained Earning (Accumulated Profit / (Loss)) opening balance should be as at Jan 31.
Currently your opening balance for Accumulated Profit / (Loss) account - (447,162.32) - also includes the value for the current year’s 4 months - (107,752.11) - so you need to amend the opening balance entered for Accumulated Profit / (Loss) to - (339,410.21) - then the Starting balance equity account will disappear.
Refer to the balance sheet that I posted above, $467,162.32 is the balance as at 31 Jan. I also think that if I put the balance of 31 Jan to the Retained Earning and then make a single entry ($107,752.11) for Feb to Jul 17, it will be finished but the Starting balance equity account in balance sheet is generated.
I suppose this software does not let users to make entry for debit or credit to the Retained Earning. Have you any suggestion ?
Thanks.
OK, to clarify - if you taking up the P&L figures from Feb to Jul 17 via a Journal Entry then all the Balance Sheet starting balances should as of Jul 17 except for Retained Earning which should be 31 Jan. That way the starting balances will be out of balance by ($107,752.11) but this will be corrected by the Journal posting.
Yes it does - Journal screenshot
Retained Earnings screenshot.
Sorry that I had provided a mistake for he previous reply. The single entry ($107,752.11) is for Feb to May 17. The resigned accounting staff has finished the accounting records for Feb to May 17. I’m now going to transfer the data of Feb to May 17 to the software.
- Accumulated Profit / (Loss) ($467,162.32) on the balance sheet is as at 31 Jan
- the single entry that I’ve made is debit expense and credit Accumulated Profit / (Loss)
Set period :
Start date :
The page that I entered Accumulated Profit / (Loss) balance as at 31 Jan ($467,162.32)
continue to the next reply…since I can only upload 3 jpg files in this reply
continued…
The journal entry for debit the profit & loss items and credit Accumulated Profit / (Loss)
Starting balance equity $107,752.11 is still showed on the balance sheet. It cannot be automatically added to Accumulated Profit / (Loss) :
Do you find out any mistakes that I’ve made on the above screenshoots ?
Thanks.
Not mistakes, but apologises as I have noted a flaw in what I have been telling you.
What we were trying to do was have the Balance Sheet as at 1 Jun and the Profit & Loss from 1 Feb and then taking up this adjustment via amending the Retained Earnings starting balance.
However, while this logically sounded workable the fact is that unfortunately it can’t be done in Manager due to the in-built controls within the Starting Balance process which I had overlooked.
So to re-start - your options are as outlined by @tut (2 days ago)
1. You can continue using the old accounting system until a new accounting year starts.
2.You can maintain the old accounting system for the first portion of the year, using Manager for the second portion. (entering the Retained earnings as at 31 May)
3.You can re-enter all transactions from 1 Feb in Manager.
Sorry for providing misleading hope.
Thanks.
Finally, I decided to choose option 2.
The balance sheet that produced by my staff is the same as below but the amount of Starting balance equity $107,752.11 was added to the Accumulated Profit / (Loss) (ie. $574,914.43 loss). Thanks.
First thing is to go to Settings and change the Start Date to 31-May2017. You want Manager’s balance sheet to be the same as the existing one, on the same day. Then enter the Starting Balances for all the balance sheet accounts as they appear on your existing balance sheet.
Here is the balance sheet from the Reports tab. I’ve summed all the assets into one account, and all of the liabilities into one account to keep it brief.
Now do your journal entry, but make sure to date it 31-May-2017. Note that the journal entry does not change the balance sheet: there is a line item that credits Retained Earnings by 107,752.11, but in sum the journal entry debits Retained Earnings by the same amount. However, the journal entry does populate the income and expense accounts.
Here is a the resulting Summary page:
Now you are good to start using Manager. Enter new transactions starting from 01-Jun-2017.
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Thank you for your reply.
I’ve followed your advise but still unsuccess. Let me show my steps for your reference.
-
change start date :
-
I haven’t re-entered the data. I just retained the existing data that I’ve entered before.
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I have changed the date of the journal entry to 31-May-17
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Setting of Accumulated Profit / (Loss).
continued…
Continued
- Print out the balance sheet
Do I need to delete all the data of the company and re-enter ?
Thanks.
You are seeing Starting balance equity because your starting balances don’t balance. The problem is in step 4, you entered 467,162.32 for the starting balance of the Accumulated Profit / Loss account. But you said that on the original balance sheet the amount is 574,914.43. So enter 574,914.43.