Start date, set period, starting equity

1

Okay my brain is fried. :blush: I’m trying to get my reports for the account accuarate and I am getting confused about how to exactly do my settings and entries in Manager. I love the program and have read so many things in the guides and forums that now I have confused myself. I’ll try to line it out simply to get the best responses to my problems.
My husband and I have an LLC and it is just me and him no employees
We have no inventory the business is designing fire sprinkler systems in CAD with only one customer that is another family LLC that does the installation of the sprinkler systems. We registered and started the business 10/5/17.
Prior to starting the business going back to 11/5/15 we had to purchase fire sprinkler books for training, computer supplies, some office supplies. We used our personal funds up until the business start up 10/5/17 and then received a loan to get a new computer and the CAD and design programs needed to do the design work.

  1. I have the loan entered and it is reporting correctly on my year end reports showing payments correctly etc.
  2. am pretty sure I have my “Chart of Accounts” set up correctly
  3. What should the start date be under “Settings” to get the start up expenses paid from personal monies to show up correctly under the different expenses accounts and to show our contribution in capital accounts correctly?
  4. Should I just use starting balance under each of our capital accounts to indicate what we spent between 11/5/15 and 10/5/17?
  5. Should I do an expense claim for all the purchases prior to 10/5/17 to designate those expenses to the correct expense accounts or just put the start balance showing what we contributed and not have those items listed under an expense account (i.e. computer supplies- books, resources and job aids)
  6. Next would I do a journal entry if I did do a journal entry. This part confuses me because when I did and expense claim and then a journal entry it recorded the items in capital accounts twice.
  7. Also the set period on the summary pages confuses me in relation to the start date entered under settings.
    I have changed these things around so many times as I read the guides and forums I have now confused myself. I know this all sounds dumb and is probably easier than I am making it. I don’t want to have to start over from scratch as we have done quite a few jobs and the thought of starting over is a bit overwhelming for me. I know once I get this all set up correctly it will be easy that is why I picked manager to begin with but trying to get stuff ready for my tax accountant has really thrown me off.
    Thanks for reading through this and hopefully not rolling your eyes. :blush: I appreciate any guidance.
2

Regardless of your date preferences, this is impossible. It must be a typo.

Perhaps you should consider the business to have started 11/5/15. That decision may be influenced by local law, but just because you weren’t making money yet doesn’t mean you were not in business. That way, the books and supplies could be entered as expense claims.

If you don’t go that route, local law may allow you to account for the books and supplies as equivalent contributions of capital. In other words, you made in-kind contributions to your capital accounts at your later start date rather than monetary contributions.

Start Date is set only when the business was ongoing before using Manager, but using another accounting system. When a Start Date is set, you have the option to enter closing balances from the previous system as opening balances in Manager. This does not apply to you.

While you could, that’s a needless complication. I would use an expense claim, allocated to our capital accounts.

This depends on which of my basic approaches you take. If your decision is that all those purchases happened before the company was in business, you must deal with them through capital accounts. If you decide the company really started earlier, you can allocate to expense accounts as of the dates the expenses were incurred. But since that’s now two years ago, you might be in trouble for not filing tax returns for 2015, etc.

If you enter an expense claim for a capital account member, it goes automatically to capital accounts. No journal entry required.

Set Period controls the date range for the Summary display. Normally you set it to begin at the beginning of the current accounting period and end at Today. Start Date, as described above, is only involved if you are transferring balances.

Now, I’ve been reading and answering your questions in order. After making it all the way through all your questions, I think the best approach is doing one expense claim each for you and your husband. Allocate to your capital accounts, which will then show what each of you has invested through contribution of personal property to the business. Date the expense claim the day you started the business, not the date you purchased the items. The date entered is the date of the claim, not the date of the purchase.

3

Tut, Sorry I’m just getting around to reading this. Yes the 10/5/17 was a typo it should have been 10/5/16 sorry about that but glad you caught it and understood it was a typo. Thank you so much for your detailed response. I understand the process now and will enter everything accordingly. I have removed the start date under settings since I did not have a previous accounting system in place. I plan to enter the expenses incurred from 11/5/15 - 10/5/16 (business start date) as expense claims for me and my husband and allocate them to the correct expense category.

I apologize for the questions I know they were basic to Manager but I have been kind of overwhelmed with the business finances our own personal and my mother who has early dementia and I am handling all her accounting as well all of a sudden. My head was over cluttered with finances.

I love manager and the forums. Everyone is so nice and understanding of people’s questions regardless of how easy it should be. I have found an accounting course website that once I have all the taxes done that I am doing I plan to start taking the courses offered.

Again thank you for the assistance you explained it very well and I think I can move forward now with hopefully no more problems.

4

Be careful about this. Because these are startup expenses, you may be required to capitalize them rather than treat them as current year expenses. Check with your accountant.