Yes, you can work in Sage past year end and close at a later date.

INVENTORY - If you deal with inventory it has to be up to date and printed on December 31st.  Sage is not able to print an inventory list for a particular date so you can't go backwards.  

One more thing: Payables and receivables must be printed before you record any payments made or received in January.  For example: One week after year end I make sure payables and receivables are up to date and match the trial balance, then I print an aged listing for both as at Dec 31st, then I can record payments made or received that week.  Once something gets paid it doesn't show up on the aged listing so it won't match the TB.

Run the Aged reports not the Overdue Aged reports and they will always be accurate when you backdate them. 

Hi Ntheosis

Please make sure you do run the AGED reports for Payables and Receivables as Richard Riding mentions in his post. Those are one for year end. They will produce the number you need to balance to the control accounts.

Sage 50 is very flexible and easy to work with in 2 fiscal years, your current and past. It has been designed to work well and post in both current and past fiscal year without difficulties.

Enjoy!

Jo Anne

So the inventory report must be printed on last day of fiscal year-end?

What if you don't have all the invoices yet for items rec'd within last couple weeks of year-end?

This doesn't make sense to me that one can't print of a report as per date selected.

Hi Smithco,

It has been my experience with the few companies I have worked for that inventory must be printed on the last day of fiscal year end.  Sage doesn't let me run an inventory report for a particular date, neither did Business Vision.  As for not having invoices, that hasn't been a problem.  I call and get one, or use the order confirmation.  Very rarely does something arrive without me knowing the price ahead of time.  It would be nice to print an inventory report as of a particular date so if anyone has any suggestions I'm listening.

Thank you, Richard.  I will do that in the future.  

It looks like the programming on the Overdue Aged reports has changed.  I haven't fully tested but I did a quick test on universl and it looks like you can make it include payments made after the date or not.  So backdating to Feb/15 will give the same totals if you do not include the payments.  The overdue report just does not show the details of all payments, only the final amount owing.

The Inventory summary report will run As At but the problem with running it back to the year end is that any entry in the new year will affect the average cost calculations.  They are calculated on an entry by entry basis, so each entry will affect the average cost even if the entries are in the new year.

Thanks Richard - I have a client that is switching from Sage 50 Premium to Sage 50 Quantum to use inventory thru Sage and dropping their 3rd party inventory system. So a backup after inventory count entered would definitely be a good idea to do at the last day of fiscal year just for inventory purpose.

Since it can take a month or two to prepare year-end to send to accountant then by moving ahead into new fiscal year and posting new year payable invoices that are inventory items then does that mean the inventory value on balance sheet will keep changing even at the prev fiscal year end date? Sorry - I haven't worked with using the inventory set up in Sage 50 so a new learning experience for me.

Smithco, I haven't done major inventory adjustments in a few years but when I last did a couple of years ago, the costing was a concern and I believe we found the As At report showed a total different than the G/L when back dated.  I don't remember all the details but I think it was tracked down to purchases posted after year end that differed in cost.  Gail Hiller might be more up-to-date on this because she has done much more with inventory over the years than I have.

As far as I know the balance sheet G/L amounts will be what they are and will not change.  But the reporting may look like an integrity problem when using the As At option to back date.

Since you haven't worked with it much, just follow your instinct and create a dummy file to test.  Follow the client's process and check out what happens to the numbers of a couple of items to see if it will affect the back-dated subjournal numbers if posting after year end with different costs.  If you find you have some questions that are best answered by someone with some more experience, you may be able to hire Gail to walk through it with you once you have some questions.  I know she's quite busy right now but she has the experience.

Thanks Richard - I am beginning to get the idea now - as you say the more we start working with it the more we will know and understand.