Adding Account Balances and Quantities to a New General Ledger

Before you can use General Ledger, you must at least enter beginning balances for the current fiscal year.

If you intend to enter period data for previous years, do so first. Entering last year’s ending balances establishes the current year’s beginning balances.

Warning! Do not post historical data if you have already entered current‐year opening balances and transactions, because doing so will overstate account balances.

To add existing account balances and quantity data to a new general ledger:

1. Start Sage 300, using the year-end date of the year before the earliest fiscal year for which you want to post transactions.

2. Create and post closing balances to the year before the first full year for which you want to keep account data. More...

   Create a batch with the closing balances of all your general ledger accounts. Make sure the batch balances, and that the batch matches your balance sheet for that year, then post the batch.

   If you do not want to enter previous-years' period balances, you must enter the previous year's period 12 balances.

3. Run Create New Year (in the G/L Periodic Processing folder) to create the opening balances for your first full year of period balances, and to advance the current year. More...

   To change the current year in General Ledger you must create a new year. The Create New Year screen closes income and expense accounts to retained earnings, creates opening balances in the next year, and advances the current year.

4. Create and post the net changes for each successive period in the first year of data, then close the year by running Create New Year. More...

   1. Create batches of transaction details for each period in the current year to bring your ledger up to date.

      Warning! If you have already advanced the current year and added current-year opening figures, do not post transactions to the previous year, or your account balances will be overstated.

      If you need to add previous year figures after entering balances in the current year, make sure that you change balances only within the year you are editing (by posting reversing entries to the adjustment period). You must not post changes that will alter closing balances for the year.

      Set the session date for the appropriate fiscal year, and create separate transaction batches for each of the periods that you want to contain data. If you want a full year of comparative period balances, you must create one transaction in each period for each account.

      Because you have already entered opening balances, these batches must contain the net changes for each account (except retained earnings) in each fiscal period.

      Important! Do not enter the closing balance of the retained earnings account, and do not create a batch for closing income and expense accounts to retained earnings. You will use General Ledger's Create New Year screen to close each year after you have posted the year's data.

   2. Post all batches.

      Note: Back up your data after you create each set of batches and after each posting.

   3. Print the posting journals, and keep them as part of your audit trail.
   4. Print trial balances for each of the periods in the year to which you posted, and compare balances to those in your current ledger.
   5. Run Create New Year to close the income statement accounts to retained earnings, and to advance the current year.
   6. Leave General Ledger, then start it again, using the year-end date of the next year for which you want to enter historical data. Again, post batches and print trial balances to check the results.

      If this is a previous year, again use the Create New Year screen to close the year.

   Note: Repeat this step for each prior year of data.

5. Print balance sheets and income statements for all past years, and compare them to your existing statements.

   Note: To use the financial statements shipped with General Ledger sample data, you must select the Use Account Groups option in the G/L Options screen, and assign each G/L account to a group using the G/L Accounts screen.