Hi. The question at the end of my narrative will be "So how do I account for these transactions, please?" Let me explain . . .
At the beginning of the year I took over as the treasurer of a small social club which were manually doing their books. I therefore set up Solar to start from the New Year with a new account using the 1st of January as the accounting date.
I was given the audited accounts for 2011. As the club donates to charity, four cheques were made out to our favourite charities but were not mailed by the former treasurer until the New Year and finally cashed mid-January. However, the auditor took them into account in the 2011 figures.
When setting up the opening balances from the bank statement it was, for the sake of this post, a figure of £3,000. The four cheques totalled £1000 so the closing balance at the end of the month was £2,000 (no cheques had been issued since the beginning of the year, nor cash deposits made).
So here comes my question again: "So how do I account for these transactions, please?" Surely, I cannot just ignore them, can I? Someone suggested that I give them a date earlier than January 2012. But the bank balance at the 1st of January was £3,000 and the four cheques were drawn mid-January. Would this not put the whole of the P&L report out of kilter as well as the Trial Balance?
Hope I've explained this correctly!
Hi Roderick,
The simplest approach is to set the opening balance of the Cheque Account to £2,000 then ignore the payments when they appear on your bank statement.
However, this will mean the bank reconciliation list in Solar Accounts will not match your statement until mid-January. An alternative approach is to create a set of General Transactions to allow you to reconcile each cheque as described here:
http://www.solaraccounts.co.uk/forum/topic.php?TopicId=1479&Posts=1
Regards,
