TB doesn't balance... BRUCE?

[--andrea--]

Hi Bruce,

Flipping Sage tries my patience sometimes! Every time the data comes back from the accountant after the year-end adjustments there is something wrong with it.

The b/f TB balances
Each sucessive month is then out as follows (always being a DR Drawings)

Mth 1 1,000
Mth 2 2,000
Mth 3 3,000
Mth 4 4,000 (this is our current month - no postings past this date)
Mth 5 5,000
Mth 6 6,000
Mth 7 6,000
Mth 8 7,000
Mth 9 8,000
Mth 10 13,000
Mth 11 14,000
Mth 12 16,048.81

£16,048.81 is the closing balance on Drawings at the end of the previous year, which was journaled to P&L (CR Drawings, DR P&L - all end of year journals posted on last day of previous year).

There are no post date transactions, and in fact there are no postings in Drawings in this financial year.

This is totally beyond my bookkeeping skills, any advice would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
--Andrea--

[niceguyedy]

possibly bucket corruption, go to financials, reports and run the transactional trial balance( the main trial balance gets its figures from somewhere else, very common after a YE for it to get confused), it should be the same as the main TB, if not run check data, if no errors you have bucket corruption. speak to Bruce about the fix or call Sage support

[brucedenney]

Based on the regular amount, my guess would be a journal to the bank. Have a look and see if there is a prepaymnet / acruall or something like the.

[--andrea--]

Very common after a year end for us all to get confused!

Thank you both for your reply, it is very much appreciated.

The Transactional Trial Balance is good, it balances. There are no errors when I run check data (there is one warning - my purchase aged balance disagrees with my creditors - but I know about that, it is a result of frigging the accountant figures to balance my ledgers - hopefully it will disappear after next year end ).

There are no journals for prepayments or accruals, it is queer that it is a regular amount til mth 6 then irregular after that.

So what is bucket corruption and how do I fix it? Do I need to fix it? I am quite happy to use the transactional trial balance in the future But will there be any side effects if I do not fix it? Is it likely to iron itself out in the future?

Many thanks,
--Andrea--

P.S. Did you notice I had my 3 year membership on this forum yesterday? That is longer than I usually hold down a job!
As you didn't send me a card, I ate ALL the cake!!

[brucedenney]

Bucket value corruption, is where the monthly balances on the nominal for each month go wrong.

You can get sage to recalculate them by changing your financial year to something else and then back again.

Make sure you backup first.

[niceguyedy]

if you have the accounts plus or proffessional.

backup
go to > settings > financial year >
if it is Jan 2009 > change it to Jan 2010 > save > then back to Jan 2009.

this will refresh the values of these "buckets", but it will remove some of the year to date figured on your customer turn over YTD, also may reset some stockmrecord figures.
best to consult sage as these can be exported, then fixed, then imported.

cheers

[--andrea--]

Thank you niceguyedy, that worked a treat.

The company provides services, so there was no issue with the stock, and the ytd figures were retained - so it is all good

Thank you, it is very much appreciated.

Andrea

[testpowin]

niceguyedy - I completed my year end and was not aware of any problems. I then went on to complete my month end for the 1st period of the new financial year and noticed there was an error with the TB figures. I have been trying to work out what the problem is with the TB for about 5 hours...I searched the internet for help and luckily found your post; I was not aware of bucket corruption before and have completed a transactional TB as advised which balances. Hopefully I'll be able to correct this error from the advice given by you and brucedenney, thanks for your help!

[testpowin]

I'm using V 2011 and managed to fix the problem by going to 'file', 'maintenance' and 'Recalculate monthly totals' but it does say NOT to run this option if the 'Clear Audit Trail' has been run for current financial year.

[brucedenney]

That is correct, if you have removed transactions that are in the current financial year with clear audit trail then the balances of those period will be incorrectly recalculated as the transactions will have been removed. I don't think I have seen anyone doing this since the days of DOS, but I guess it could happen.

[testpowin]

Recalculating the monthly totals didn't correct all the figures as I first thought, the balance sheet figures on the TB were right but the P&L were still incorrect. I have now realised that when I ran the Year End procedure for 31/03/2013 Sage changed the date correctly for the new financial year end to 31/03/2014 but did not actually post the 31/03/2013 Ledger Year End journals, something must have happened which stopped the year end procedure completing fully. To correct this I set the financial year back to 31/03/2013, changed the program date to 31/03/2013 and run the year end again. Everything seems okay now, new financial year end is at 31/03/2014 and the Ledger Year End journal for 31/03/2013 has actually posted this time. Ran financial reports and everything seems fine now...phew!