Below is an example of a list of procedures to perform before closing. Develop your own list and use it each time you close the period or year.

. Close the period or year for your Sage Pro applications in the following order: PO and SO first, AP, AR, IC, JC, and PR (Payroll is closed quarterly) second, and GL last.

. Make sure all users are out of Sage Pro. To see which users are logged in, click the "Active Users" button.

. Start System Manager, and select Transaction/System Recovery/Clear Flags/Clear All Flags.

. Select Transaction/System Recovery/Reindex Application Files. Reindex all files.

. Select Transaction/System Recovery/Reindex System Files. Reindex all system files.

. Select Transaction/System Recovery/Recalculate Application Balances.

. Make a complete backup of your data files on new discs or tapes. This backup can be separate from your daily backups.

. For each module that you want to close, start System Manager, and select Transaction/Close Period/Close Period (or Close Period and Year).

Closing the Period or Year

Finish all work in A/R, A/P, and I/C for the month/year.

Post all batches in the General Ledger.

No more work in any module should be done, but if more entries are needed, do them then release and post to G/L again.

Print all needed reports** - some basics are:

A/P-Aging, Master Journal- (this must be printed before closing)

A/R-Aging, Invoice Register Summary, Sales Tax Reports, Statements, Finance Charge Invoices

I/C-Inventory on Hand (only non-zero values!!)

P/O-Open Purchase Orders (to validate)

S/O-Open Sales Orders (to validate)

(Some of these reports may need to be re-printed if changes occur after closing!)

In system manager/transaction/close period/close period or period and year, then select your company's modules: AP, AR, IC, SO, PO, GL (AQ does not have to be closed).

For AP and AR, make sure you enter the last day of month for closing (not the current day), you don't need to print reports if you have done that already, and you only delete history as needed.

For IC, make sure you enter last day of the month here also, and pack and rebuild as needed, (takes longer) maybe once a quarter or every 6 months.

For PO and SO, save notes and memos and delete history and needed.

Close GL last. When it asks for the destination of the log select none. Then you do want to delete cancelled and deleted records, then use the default date that comes up.

(If you ever want to delete history, you must enter a password, the password is "destruct")

Print G/L Trial Balance and do any needed J/E's and post them to finish printing all Financial Statements.

In System Manager close the period for the G/L module.

If any adjustments or corrections are needed after closing for previous month, post to prior period with journal entries.

In System Manager, under maintain/companies/fiscal calendar, you may choose to lock certain periods so there will be no access to them from any module unless you choose to unlock the period (this may also be done automatically).

**These reports are only suggestions for month end closing. You may find you need more or less reports according to your accounting records.

When selecting the payment priority for a payable, you have the following choices:

• 1–9

One is the highest priority, and nine is the lowest. Select a payment priority of 1 to approve the invoice for immediate payment. Select 2 through 9 to indicate the payment priority for invoices that you want to approve for payment at a later time.

Select a payment priority of M to indicate that the payment was or will be made by a manual check only (i.e., a check not processed and printed from Accounts Payable). When you enter the invoice, you will have an opportunity to enter additional information about the manual check, including the amount that is approved to pay, the check number and the check date.

Select C to indicate that payment was or will be made with a credit card, or in other words, another vendor. It does not necessarily have to be a credit card vendor. When you save the invoice header, you will be prompted to enter the vendor number you wish to transfer the payable to. An example would be submitting a purchase order to one vendor then cutting a check to a buying group for the purchase.

Select N if you want to pay the invoice with a non-check form of payment, such as a wire transfer, eft, or automatic withdrawal from the bank. You will then be prompted to enter the approved to pay amount, the payment number and date.

Select zero to indicate that the invoice is on payment hold, and can’t be paid until you change the priority.

If you enter 1, M, C, or N in the Payment Priority field, you see additional fields after you enter all information in the Enter Payables dialog box.

After you enter a cash receipt, you can use the Show Summary option to get an intermediate report of the receipts you have entered so far, and then select OK to resume processing.

Using the item type of "asset" can let you have your accounting software keep track of your fixed asset schedule and each line item's depreciation so you no longer have to keep it manually or in a different system.

The first things you need to set up are the items themselves. Create an "asset" item template and copy from it. You will need multiple asset templates if you have multiple fixed asset accounts. Add in your assets at their initial cost. The item control account should not be the inventory account, it should be a fixed asset account. The PO clearing account should be the same, and the IC clearing account can be your "allowance for depreciation" account.

Fixed Assets purchased through Accounts Payable (cash)

When buying a new fixed asset and the payment of the asset is associated with a vendor invoice through accounts payable, you can do a purchase order for the asset, receive it, and run it through the system. But instead of increasing the inventory account value, it will go into the fixed asset account, and increase that value. The offset will be your purchase order clearing account just like any other payable. When the vendor invoice arrives, it can be used to invoice PO receipts.

So far, what you have done is create an item and issue a PO. This has no effect on your GL. When you receive the PO, the value of the asset item debits your fixed asset account and credits PO clearing. When you Invoice the PO receipt, your AP account gets credited, and PO clearing is "cleared" and debited the same amount.

Fixed Assets purchased through Notes Payable (lease terms, loan)

If this fixed asset has a note payable associated with it, instead of going through accounts payable with a purchase order, you must go to inventory control/transacactions/receive inventory. This receipt will debit your fixed asset account and you can credit a note payable account. This way, when paying the vendor each month the expense for that check can go to reduce the total amount of the note payable (and maybe some interest expense also).

For assets that have a note attached to them, what you have done is received the item (debit fixed assets, credit notes payable) and each time you make a payment for the asset, your note payable account would be reduced by the principal amount.

In General

Now a report can be run through IC (inventory on hand). But instead of leaving on the option grid to print it "inventory type [all]", choose inventory type [asset]. The report will show you your fixed assets and their value.

The next step now is figuring depreciation for each fixed asset. This starts with creating an asset type item called depreciation for each corresponding fixed asset item. Make sure each depreciation asset item has an item setting of 2 or 3 decimal places and a value (cost) of the entire amount of depreciation you will be writing off for the asset item it goes with. The accounts for the depreciation items should be item control account = allowance for depreciation, po clearing = po clearing, and ic clearing will be your depreciation expense account. Put some thought into the item numbers for both your assets and depreciation. When you run the report, Sage Pro lists numbers first, then letters. So if you have asset item "1COMP" then "1COMPDEPR" will be immediately after it on your report. (If it gets out of order, remember, you can always do key changes.)

When it is time to do your depreciation write-offs, you can do an "item issue" under transactions in inventory control. This is where you will issue the depreciation item for the percentage of the total value (this is why you need 2 or 3 decimal places for the item). When the life of the asset is expired, you will have written off 100% of the item's value. For example, in straight-line depreciation, you may write off 10% of the item's value each year for 10 years. You would issue .10 of the depreciation item associated with the asset each year.

Lets say we have received, from a purchase order, one computer for one thousand dollars. You will have now debited your fixed assets by $1,000 and credited po clearing by $1,000. When the paperwork comes, you may enter it through "invoice po receipts" in accounts payable. The effect of this entry on the general ledger will be a credit to accounts payable and a debit to po clearing (po clearing now being zero from this transaction). At the end of the year, you would "issue" out of inventory .10 of the depreciation item associated with the computer. When you ran your asset item on-hand report, you would see 1 computer on hand for $1,000 and -.10 depreciation for -$100.00 these netting out to give your total fixed asset account a value of $1,000, and allowance for depreciation a balance of -$100, and depreciation expense a value of $100.

Maybe one of the problems with the detail and summary invoice registers not balancing could be from the session numbers. When the session numbers are blanked out (space-bar through all numbers), every session number is included in the report, even though the header information says otherwise. If you leave the session numbers as they are (enter through them) you get the same header info, but different report results. This is worsened when an upgrade was done to 6.0 or 5.0 from vp or 3.2 or 5.0 or whatever. The session numbers start over at 00000 after the upgrade. So any reports brought up from before the conversion are messed up. Make sure you are spacing through the session numbers to blank them out.

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