New Financial Year

Is there a way to separate financial years on Manager? Do I create/clone another ‘New Business’ account on Manager?

Does anyone have a best practice on how to keep records of separate financial years on Manager? Appreciate any tips.

Happy new year by the way.

Manager is a continuous accounting package so all data is held within the business file.

  • At the end of a financial period consider Close an accounting period | Manager
  • Clone annual reports and update the periods
  • For reports with prior year comparator, add the new comparator period

I would like to add that perpetual accounting systems are the norm. In reality what most people need to prepare is annual reports and these often exist of:

  1. Income statement, which in Manager is the Profit and Loss statement where you enter a period from date to date such as 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021 for a statement for the year 2021.

  2. Balance sheet, which is a statement of Assets and Liabilities and Equity status at a particular date and if you would need to include it in a financial report for 2021 you would need to put 31 December 2021 as the date at which the status of the balance sheet is assessed. Balance sheets can and should not be annualised, they take all info from the start to the date at which one is interesting to know its status.

  3. Cash Flow Statement, same as with the Profit and Loss statement this can and should be assessed over a period of time and thus requires a from and to date such as 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021 for a statement for the year 2021.

  4. Statement of Changes in Equity, this also is measured over a period and therefore requires a from and to date such as 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021 for a statement for the year 2021.

So the exception is the Balance Sheet, but this is a very essential part of the financial statements of any business as it tells you what you actually own and owe at a particular date and thus gives an idea of the actual “value” of the business.

UPDATE: So in answer to @brian_itsup it would not make sense to start accounting afresh every year as far as the all important balance sheet accounts are concerned as these are perpetual. Manager like all it main competitors are perpetual accounting systems.

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