History Mode in Simply Accounting by Sage

2 minute read time.


Whenever a new company is created, it starts out in History Mode.  From talking to clients, I found that a lot of them quite understand what History Mode is, what you should be doing in it and when is it ok to close it.  Understandably, this is especially true for brand new clients, creating a company file for the first time.  Hopefully I can shed some light on History Mode and its importance.

As I mentioned earlier, every newly created company starts off in History Mode.  This allows the user to enter opening balances for accounts, historical transactions, YTD amounts for employees and opening quantities and values for inventory.  I will go into each one of these in detail.

Entering opening balances for accounts

Whether this is an existing business or a brand new one, you will have some opening balances to enter.  For a brand new business it might just be the opening balance of the bank account and Owner Equity account.  For an existing company you will probably have a whole Trial Balance full of accounts to enter opening balances for.  While in History Mode, you can enter the opening balances by double clicking on the account in the Chart of Accounts and entering the balance in the Opening Balance field.

Historical Transactions

When you enter an opening balance for the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable accounts, you need to show what outstanding invoices make up those opening balances.  You would do that by entering these invoices as Historical Transactions in the “historical transaction” tab of the vendor/customer records.  Keep in mind that a historical transaction does not create a journal entry and thus does not affect the balances of any accounts.

Historical YTD amounts for employees

If you created your company, or started using the payroll module, after the calendar year has started and some payroll has been processed, you will need to enter the YTD amounts for that calendar year as historical amounts.  This is done in the various tabs of the employee record.  You will see a Historical Amount column in the Taxes, Income and Deductions tabs and this is what you would enter the Year To Date amounts that have been accumulated before you started using the Payroll module.  As with other historical transactions, entering the amounts does not affect the balance of any accounts nor does it create a journal entry.  It is assumed that you will have accounted for those amounts in the opening balances the payroll related accounts.  HINT: while in History mode, payroll taxes will not be calculated automatically. 

Historical Inventory

In the inventory record of each item you will see the History tab.  This is where you would enter the opening quantity and value for each item.  Again, as with payroll and A/P and A/R, the historical amounts do not affect the accounts or create a journal entry.  You should account for the values in the opening balances of your inventory asset accounts. 

Once you are finished entering the historical data, you can close History Mode by going to the History menu on the home screen.

Parents
No Data
Comment
  • $core_v2_ui.GetResizedImageHtml($comment.User.AvatarUrl, 44, 44, "%{border='0px', alt=$comment.User.DisplayName, ResizeMethod='ZoomAndCrop'}")
    $core_v2_ui.UserPresence($comment.User.Id) $comment.User.DisplayName
    This comment is under review.
Children
No Data