Transfer to Sage

[sbrown1264]

Hi

I have a client who is currently using QB desktop. Their year end is end of June, the vat return is up to the end of May. They are moving to Sage from the 1st July, so my question is how do we enter all the June invoices in to Sage for the purposes of the next vat return (individually or as a one off figure)
No o/b will be entered until the accountants have audited and supplied all o/b's. I am looking for advice, help and your thoughts.

Regards
Stephen

[brucedenney]

Use the O/B option to enter the opening balances for the Customer and Supplier accounts

Your accountants will later give you an opening balance sheet for the T/B.

When you have the TB from your accountants, you simply run the opening TB in Sage and then do a journal (backdated to last year, to adjust the opening balances in Sage to match those from the accountants.

As long as you entered all the o/b transactions with dates earlier than the beginning of the financial year, the will be part of the opening Balance TB in Sage. The o/b transactions are gross and have no VAT as the assumption is that VAT was accounted for in your previous system and has already been paid/reclaimed.

Word of advice. If there are any adjustments to the Debtors or Creditors controls then these should be treated as auditors adjustments and not posted to the control accounts as this will create warnings, I suggest creating Auditors adjustment accounts next to the control accounts and post auditors adjustments to those. With luck, the Opening Debtors and Creditors controls should match the value of the outstanding debtors and creditors and there will be no adjustments by the accountants. Anyway, that is all for a later time, when the audit is done.

[sbrown1264]

Hi

how do we enter all the June invoices in to Sage for the purposes of the next vat return (individually or as a one off figure)?

[brucedenney]

I would generally enter them individually using the original dates, but it is perfectly acceptable to put on lump sums.

The benefit of putting them on individually is that if a customer missed an invoice and pays the account less one invoice, you are more likely to be able to work out what has gone on, it also means that a statement will show the outstanding transactions individually rather than a lump balance.

Having said that if there are lots of invoices, and the customer pays them all in one lump sum every month, I might save the extra work and put them on as a lumps "May Invoices" and "June invoices". That would look okay on a statement, save me effort and still make sense.

You need to think about it and do it which ever way works best for your circumstances.

[sbrown1264]

We are in the process of moving a client over to Sage from QBD. Am I correct in regards to MTD we just tick the box in Sage and enter the gateway info? (same as in QBD) nothing else to do?
Regards
Stephen

[brucedenney]

Making Tax Digital (MTD) needs to be turned on in Settings>Company Preferences>VAT.

This is also where you set all other VAT related things such as cash accounting.

[sbrown1264]

Thanks again. So because vat returns were done in QBD and moving all accounts to Sage this month, just tick the box. Do we need to change anything on HMRC or anything like that?

Regards
Stephen

[brucedenney]

HMRC are fine, they just want submitted returns, they don't care where they come from, look at all the bridging software that circumvent it!

The thing you don't want to do is to pay/claim vat twice or not at all.

Transactions that are submitted in the old system should be entered in Sage as opening balance transactions with the gross amount as net and no vat.
Transactions that are on the old system and not gone on a vat return should be entered as normal transactions in sage as the VAT on them will need to be accounted for.

[sbrown1264]

Thanks again
The last vat return was upto May and completed in QBD, we are going to enter the transactions from June onwards in Sage, so there is no Vat figures to transfer, just the usual O/B's

Regards
Stephen

[sbrown1264]

Hi
so far so good. Just a quick question i have entered an ob for the bank account and i notice that it also posts the balance to the suspense account? does the year end clear that if not how do i get it out?

Regards
Stephen

[brucedenney]

When you have entered all your opening balances, you then do an adjusting journal to bring the opening TB in Sage in line with the closing TB from the previous system, this will get rid of any balances in the P&L (the suspense), create the retain profit and loss etc..

[sbrown1264]

i only entered an ob for the bank account

[brucedenney]

That is fine, the suspense will get journaled to the retained profit and loss/ assets/liabilities etc.

The key thing is that the Balance sheet should be the same at the beginning of the new year in Sage as it would have been at the beginning of the new year in the old system.

[sbrown1264]

thank you