[Question] Opening Balances

[Cindy Nieuwenhuizen]

Good day all,

I trust everyone is doing well.

How do I process take-on balances in Sage 50c Pastel Partner?

I have to fix/recon the previous Pastel Backup done by a previous person in order for the financial Statements to be drawn up, and there are a few instances where opening balances was never brought in? For example Supplier Opening Balances.

Also, the main bank account opening balance was brought in, but posted to the suspense account and I need to clear the suspense account to nil.

Assistance will be appreciated, thank you.

Kind regards,
Cindy

[Neville Bailey]

Hi Cindy,

I presume you want to process take-on balances for the beginning of the current financial year, i.e. 1 March 2022.

You will need a trial balance as at 28 February 2022 to work from, as well as the supplier and customer age analysis reports as at 28 February 2022.

To process the take-on balances for your suppliers, open the supplier journal, then click on the Settings button at the bottom, then untick "This Year Transactions", and then Close. You will the words "Last Year" appear in red below the journal. Process, for each supplier account, the closing balance as at 28 February 2022, and use the suspense account as the contra account.

Repeat the above process for your customers, using a customer journal, and for your general ledger accounts, using a general journal.

In the case of cashbooks, if the take-on balance is favourable, open the receipts cashbook, change it to Last Year, and allocate the closing balance to the suspense account.

The net balance of the suspense account should be zero, if you have processed all of the above from a balanced trial balance.

It sounds like certain accounts do already have opening balances - if they agree with the trial balance, then ignore them in the above process.

[Cindy Nieuwenhuizen]

Hi Neville,

Thank you so much for your reply.

There was no accounting system used prior to last year (YE22), so no trail balance, customer and supplier age analysis is available?

I only have the bank statement which reflects the opening balance as at 01/03/2021, and the supplier statements reflecting 01/03/2021 opening balances.

[Neville Bailey]

That will be a problem, as you will not be able to clear the suspense account to zero, without processing all the opening balances (which should cancel each other out).

Nevertheless, the process I outlined will still be valid, for those opening balances that you have on hand.