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Year End and Advanced Reporting in Simply Accounting 1 of 17 www.sageu.com Copyright © 2009 Sage Software Inc.

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Year End and Advanced Reporting in Simply Accounting by Sage

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1. Welcome

2. Presentation and Questions

• Do not put your phone line on hold during the presentation

• Mute your line during the presentation

• * 6 to mute and un-mute your phone line to ask questions

3. Calendar Year – January to December

4. Fiscal Year End – any 12 month period (can also be the same dates as a calendar year)

5. Calendar and Fiscal Year End Check Lists

6. System lock date

7. Automatically Clearing Data

8. Backing up company data • Assign a unique file name – Example: Company Name and date – ABC Company Dec 31, 2009

• Store backup file in 2 locations, one location off site of the business

9. Advancing the system date to a New Year

• Start New Calendar Year

• Start New Fiscal Year

• Start New Fiscal and Calendar Year

10. Creating an Accountant’s Copy

11. Posting transactions in two (2) fiscal years

• Current year

• Previous Year

12. Year End Information for accountant

• Balance Sheet Review

• Lock out system date

• Backup

13. Year end adjusting entries

• System lock date

• Adjusting entries

• Adjusting entries that effect control accounts, A/R, A/P and Vacation Payable

14. Financial Reports

• Regular and Advanced Management Reports

• Reports Export to Excel

• Graphs

• My Reports

15. Questions and course wrap up for attendees in SA-Level 2


________________________________________________________________________________ Calendar Year

A calendar year begins on January 01 and ends on December 31 of the given calendar system (year).

Fiscal Year

A twelve month period which a company chooses for an accounting cycle. It may not necessarily be the same as a calendar year.

Enhanced view of Simply Accounting by Sage

Business Assistant - Checklists

Calendar Year-End Procedures


Calendar Year-End Checklist in Simply Accounting

√ Check Data Integrity, in the Maintenance menu, choose “Check Data Integrity”. √ Back up your company files - On the File menu, choose Backup, and then fill in the screen.

√ Print payroll reports: Payroll Transaction Detail Employee Summary for all employees Employee Detail for all employees T4 Slips

Fiscal Year End Checklist in Simply Accounting

√ Check Data Integrity, in the Maintenance menu, choose “Check Data Integrity”. √ Back up your company files - On the File menu, choose Backup, and then fill in the screen. √ Or instead of a Back up copy of your data, create an Accountants Copy if your Accountant √ Reconcile Accounts - Do this at month-end, or when you receive your bank or credit card statement. √ Print Year-End Reports - Print reports as of the last day of the year.

• Income Statement - Month-to-date

• Income Statement - Year-to-date

• Balance Sheet

• Transactions By Account (past month)

• All Transactions (past month)

• Chart of Accounts

• Purchase Transaction Details

• Payment Transaction Details

• Vendor Aged (Summary and Detail)

• Sales Transaction report

• Receipt Transaction Details

• Customer Aged (Summary and Detail)

• Payroll Transaction Details (Past month)

• Inventory (Quantity and Synopsis)

• Item Assembly Transactions (Past month)

• Adjustment Transactions (Past month)

• Project Report

√ Print budget reports - Print the comparative Income Statement showing actual and budgeted amounts.

√ Prepare this year's budget - Update this year's budget using last year's comparative Income Statement.

√ Make yearend adjustments √ Ensure that the 'Do not allow transactions dated before' option is set. √ Process your adjustments with a date in the previous fiscal year. √ Uncheck the 'Do not allow transactions dated before' option after you finish making adjustments.

System Lock Date

The lock date is to ensure no transactions are posted to the prior period of the lock date selected. The lock date is used to close off a month end or a business’s year end. It is recommended to set the lock date when the books have been handed over to the accountant to start and complete the businesses year end and also when the yearend has been completed with yearend adjusting entries and the books complete to the closing Trial balance.


Clearing Data Automatically

Simply Accounting stores your company data until you clear it or until the maximum retention age is reached. Clearing data periodically can make reports easier to interpret and simplify transaction lookups in the search window and also helps the program to run more efficiently by preventing data files from getting too large. Data can be cleared manually or by setting up the selections to clear data automatically.

Before you begin to clear data, it is recommended that you consult with your accountant on the data date period you would like to clear. Also ensure to complete a backup of the company data before you begin to clear data.

It is cautioned in clearing data to ensure you understand what data is being cleared and how it will affect the daily businesses activity in looking up transactions.

At fiscal year end, Simply Accounting can automatically clear old data from the system. Select the Automatically Clear Data and check the boxes of the data that you would like to be cleared automatically and indicate the age of details that you would like to retain.


Financial History

Your company financial history is a record of its monthly account balances for previous fiscal year. The program moves your company’s account information to your financial history whenever you start a new fiscal year. If you want to see how many years of financial history is stored for your company, open the Settings window from the Setup menu and click the company link.

The data is stored for 7 years or for 100 years in Simply Accounting Premium and higher.

Backing up company data

Backing up your company creates a second copy of your company data in a .CAB folder. The information in this folder is a snapshot of your company’s records up to the day on which the backup copy was made.

Backing up your company data regularly is highly recommended. The only limit is the amount of storage space you have available. It is a very good idea to keep the backup copies of your company data on a different storage device than the one you use to store your working copy of your company.

Listed below are reasons to maintain a regular and frequent backup schedule for your company data. From your backup you can:

• Restore your company file if the working copy becomes damaged or lost

• Look up details that you have already cleared.

• Product reports from previous years.

• Working copy data lost

To complete a Backup, select the File drop down menu and “Backup” or the Quick Key in the tool bar.

When backing up your company, be sure to assign each Backup a unique name.

File Name: The name of company and date Location: Where the Backup File will be stored Comment: Company Name, Date and Last Journal Entry Number


Advancing session date into a New Year

There are two (2) types of New Years in Simply Accounting, Fiscal Year and the other is a Calendar Year.

There are two (2) ways to advance data into a new Calendar or Fiscal Year; one is by advancing the session date to the first date of the New Year...

And the other is using the Maintenance menu and select “Start New Year”

If your company Fiscal year has different dates than a calendar year, the Start New Year window displays as below.

If your company Fiscal year and Calendar year are the same dates – January 1 to December 31, Simply Accounting will display both New Fiscal and Calendar Year. The system will inform you of successfully starting a new fiscal year.


Simply Accounting confirms if you want the program to clear old data from the system. If the company has been set up to automatically clear data, then select Yes. If the company has not set up to automatically clear data feature, then select no. The Update Locking Date window appears, this is the System Lock Date.

Posting Transactions in two (2) Fiscal Year – Current and Previous Years Data

This function became available in Simply Accounting 2008 and higher versions. Transactions can be posted in the current year and also in the previous year. For the Previous year’s transactions, all the balances will be updated to the Trial Balance and Retained Earnings.

When posting to the previous fiscal year, you will receive a Confirmation message.

When transactions are posted to a previous year, all balances in the Trial Balance will be updated to the last Journal Entry transaction posted.

Preparation for Year End

√ Sales Invoices and Expenses entered to the yearend date √ Review Accounts Receivable and Payables Summary Reports √ Physical inventory count and adjustments √ Review Payroll for any errors and omissions √ Bank and other accounts reconciliations complete

√ Review Income Statement General Ledger accounts for errors or omissions

√ Pre-paid expenses and deposits adjustments √ Review Balance Sheet General Ledger accounts √ Request and Receive statements for all loans displaying the loan balance as of the year end date. Compare the balance in the businesses accounting records to the statement.


Information to provide for the accountant to complete the business’s year end

This information is only a recommendation for the business to provide for the accountant, only portions of this list may pertain to your business. Most accountants will provide a yearend letter outlining the information they require to complete the business’s year end.

√ List of any doubtful Accounts Receivables or bad debts √ Statements of all bank accounts √ Bank Reconciliation reports of all bank accounts √ Investment account(s) statements √ Work in Progress information √ Copy of Physical Inventory count √ Pre-paid deposits and expenses accounts information √ Capital Assets additions – copy of the purchase invoice √ Credit Card(s) statements √ Copy of loan(s) activities statement √ Payroll information √ Last Corporate Tax statement from CRA showing the “RC” account balance √ Copy of remittance(s) at the yearend date for PST, GST/HST, Payroll Source Deductions or any other tax accounts. √ Print at year end date, Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Trial Balance, Chart of Accounts, Accounts Receivable and Payable Summary List √ Backup copy of the company data

Accountant’s Copy

An account’s copy is a copy of your company data that you create and give to your accountant to make General Journal entries while you continue to work with your original company data. Your accountant must be using Simply Accounting Accountant’s Edition in order for you to be able to continue working. It is recommended to backup your data prior to creating an accountant’s copy.

When your accountant finishes working with the accountant’s copy, they will give you a file to import into your Simply Accounting Company data file.

While your accountant had a copy of your company data, there are no restrictions on what you can do, but it is recommended that you do not:

• Delete or renumber any accounts, projects, departments and tax codes

• Delete or modify any currency information

Performing any of the above actions may prevent some of your account’s entries from importing into your company data.

You must be in single-user-mode to create an account’s copy and the Accountant’s copy will have access to the full accounting rights as the sysadmin rights.

You can only have one Accountant’s copy at any given time. If you create another account’s copy, the existing copy will be cancelled. If you cancel an account’s copy that your accountant is working on, you will not be able to import any entries made by your accountant using that copy.


Year End Adjusting Entries other than using the Accountant’s Copy

Adjusting entries are journal entries usually made at the end of an accounting period to allocate income and expenditures to the period in which they actually occurred.

Year End adjusting entries are normally provided by the accountant which provides the adjustment information of account numbers and amounts to bring the businesses books in balance to the businesses Year End closing Trial Balance.

Year End adjusting entries are recommended to be posted to the last date of the company’s Fiscal Year. If the System lock date is turned on to not allow transactions to the Previous Year, you must change the System Lock date prior to starting the Year End adjusting entries.

Adjusting entries are posted using the General Journal which is located in the Company Navigator under the Accountant’s Tasks.


Below is an example of a Year End Journal Entry transaction, Journal Entry 1.

Transactions that affect the General Ledger control accounts of Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Vacation Payable, must be recorded using the sub-ledger journals.

Account Receivable – Sales Journal Accounts Payable – Purchases Journal Vacation Payable – Payroll Journal

Account Receivable – Sales Journal

Below is an example of a Journal Entry affecting the General Ledger control account, Accounts Receivable.

Journal Entry 2

2310 GST Collected on Sales Debit 22.50 5650 Bad Debts Debit 450.00 1200 Accounts Receivable Credit 472.50


Sales Journal Entry displays the accounting transaction. A confirmation for previous Fiscal Year entry, select Yes.

In the Receipts Journal, clear the bad debt original invoice and the year end adjusting entry against each other to clear the Journal and apply to the customer’s account. This will be a zero Journal Entry.

In clearing the total amount of zero, 0.00 the transaction and Journal Entry will be a nil entry.

Account Payable – Purchases Journal

The same process is followed as the Accounts Receivable for any Year End adjusting entries affecting Accounts Payable.


Vacation Payable – Payroll Journal

Below is an example of a Year End adjusting entry for Vacation Payable. To reverse Vacation Accrued put a (-) negative number in the Vacation Accrued line. The negative number will Debit Vacation Payable General Ledger account. In the Cheque No field put in the adjusting entry number.

Journal Entry 3

To reverse vacation payable for Heather Jones

2170 Vacation Payable Debit 230.40 5410 Wages and Salaried Credit 230.40

Viewing the Payroll Journal Entry is confirmation the accountants Year End Journal Entry is the same as the adjustment being posted.


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Financial Reporting in Simply Accounting by Sage

________________________________________________________________________________ Report Centre - Financials

Management Reports


Reports Exported to Excel – Reports can be exported and opened in Excel files, all formatting will be carried over with the file.

Graph Reports


My Reports

The My Reports feature allows you to store reports that you use frequently and organize them into groups. You can then generate all of the reports in a group at once (batch-generating). This can save a lot of time and is also very convenient if you often find yourself producing the same reports at the same time.

Report Templates

Report templates are reports that you have saved. Saving reports is very useful especially when you regularly use the same layout for a specific report. You save a report template by clicking Save Template in the report's dialog options.

When you save a report as a template, it is automatically added to the report list in My Reports. Also to increase your productivity, reports can be saved as Group templates.

If you save a template with the current session date, the report date changes automatically when you change the session date. If you save a report template with the latest transaction number (for example, in the Payment Transactions report), the Transaction number box in the modify dialog updates with each processed transaction.

Report Groups

Report groups are collections of reports you create to allow you to batch-generate them at the click of a button. This is especially convenient if there are a number of reports that you find yourself looking at simultaneously at regular intervals. For example, if you produce the same six reports at the end of each month, you might create a report group called Month End and add those reports to this group. In order to add a report to group, it must first be saved as a report template.

Save a Report as a Template in My Reports

1. Open the report you want to save as a template, customize the columns prior to saving template.

Modify the Report prior to saving the template.

2. Select the reports options


3. In the Modify Reports Options window, select Save Template.

4. Save template as – give the report a name and Save

Create Report Groups – Open Report Centre

Select My Reports and open My Reports

Select Set Up Report Groups


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Simply Accounting Training Notes ________________________________________________________________________________

year end and advance reporting in simply accounting ...ftp.bestsoftware.com/lms/simply/level 2...

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