First of all may I say how impressed I am with Solar accounts and your quick reponse to queries. I have not purchased yet but aim to do so in the course of the next few days.

I have just reconciled everything on our existing system up to and including 31 October 2009. I have still to do the VAT return for quarter ending 31 October 2009 but this will be done shortly. We are on cash accounting for vat. Our financial year ends on 31 March 2010.

I am thinking I will either import or manually input (or a combination of both) from 1 April 2009. Alternatives are to start using Solar from 1 November or wait till 31 March 2010.

Whilst in the main I see any of the options as straight forward I am not clear how to deal with customer and supplier balances that are outstanding on the proposed start date. I assume:

1. I can set up each customer with there opening balance as at 31 March 2009 and then set off payments received against the opening balances until reduced to zero.

2. Do the same for supplier balances except payments made would be used to reduce the opening balances to zero.

Once I am happy with opening balances I presume I can import both customer invoices and supplier invoices from 1 April to 31 October 2009. I have trialled this successfully.

I am still waiting for our accountant to produce the audited figures to 31 March 2009 but presume I can use these to set up opening balances for other assetts and liabilities.

If there is any other useful advice you can give I would be grateful.

Hi Roger,

Thanks for the positive feedback - it's nice to know our software and support are appreciated!

It sounds like you know what you are doing. I think most people in your situation would be happy to start from 1 November 2009 to avoid having to enter the data from 1 April to 31 October 2009. However, if you did this you would have to produce two P&L reports for the financial year (one from your old system, one from Solar Accounts) then merge them.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. To set up opening balances for customer and suppliers, Solar Accounts simply creates invoices. So if you choose 1 April as your 'conversion date', you will still have a few invoices dated before 1 April.

2. If these opening balance invoices are from a previous financial year (ie your conversion date is 1 April) change the account on the invoice line to be 'Retained Earnings' so they don't affect the balance of income or expense accounts.

3. If you choose 1 November as the conversion date, you will need to set up the opening balance of Income and Expense accounts by recording a General Transaction which debits and credits the appropriate accounts. (Directly setting the opening balance of income and expense accounts will not affect the P&L report for the current year).

Regards,

Thank you for your quick response.

My preference at the moment is to set up Solar from 1 April which is the start of our financial year. I think I would prefer to enter outstanding invoices for suppliers and customers prior to that date as sales, purchases, gas etc rather than retained earnings and then set off payments against them in the current financial year.

Then when our accountand produces our year end figures I assume I can manually update balances to reflect the year end situation.

I would not envisage trying to get profit and loss etc figures etc out of Solar for previous financial years but would retain our existing system for this purpose.

Can you see any snags with what I am suggesting?

Yours

Robert

Hi Robert,

That approach sounds fine to me. (In fact it's probably easier than changing the opening balance invoice accounts).

Cheers,