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I had to enter a payment on account because I didn’t know what invoices the customer was paying initially but they have now provided me with details. How do I now go back in and allocate this receipt in Sage?

Go into the ‘Bank’ Module and click on ‘Customer’ exactly as you would if you were posting a normal customer receipt. You should enter the same date as the original payment and then ‘pay in full’ the sales invoices and the original receipt. You should then end up with a zero customer receipt amount if you don’t you have done something wrong!
The same process applies to on account supplier payments except this time you would go to ‘Supplier’ in the ‘Bank’ Module.

What is the Ex. Reference for on the batch invoice process?

It’s an extra reference that you can use in a number of ways for example an order number, job specific reference or a unique code for your filing purposes if you file invoices by an internal numbering system.

The previous bookkeeper set up all the suppliers and customers without clicking the ‘Terms Agreed’ part. Every time I post anything to an account I get a message saying ‘The Terms have not been agreed’ I know how to change them individually but there’s hundreds, is there a quick way.

It depends on which version of Sage you are using but yes it is possible and very simple to do; click on any supplier or customer and then click on ‘Batch Change’. You will then get a blank account record, click on the ‘Credit Control’ page as normal and tick the ‘Terms Agreed’ box and ‘Save’. Say yes to the message asking if you want to make the change to multiple accounts.

I am trying to complete a bank reconciliation and there are various receipts relating to individual cheques banked but there is only one amount in Sage. How do I know which receipts in Sage belong to the one amount showing on the bank statement as I don’t have the paying in book to hand?

It is so important when entering a number of cheques in Sage that you use the paying book page number in the reference box. We know that not everyone works like us though and sometimes it is very hard to work it out. The most recent versions of Sage allow you to highlight various transactions before matching them and on the right hand side a total appears. Hopefully the transactions highlighted will agree to the total showing on the bank statement.

I have not run my year end yet in Sage as I am waiting for information from my accountant; can I still enter transactions for the next financial year?

Yes you can as Sage is date specific; you will see a message though every time you post in the next year though. In some versions of Sage you will be able to pause this message but don’t forget to run your year end when you can!

What month end reports should I run?

It obviously differs from company to company but the main ones to consider printing are aged debtors, sales day books, sales receipts, aged creditors, purchase day books, supplier payments, bank payments, bank receipts, bank statement, audit trail, trial balance, profit & loss and balance sheet. It is obviously important to remember to only set the date parameters to the month you’re reporting on e.g. 01-01-2013 to 31-01-2013.

I have just run our year end and noticed that there was a large sales invoice that hadn’t been updated to the ledger. What can I do as this invoice obviously needs to be included in the turnover figures for that particular year?

Hopefully, you took backups of your Sage data prior to running your year end? If you did you will be able to restore your data to before doing the year end, you can then update the sales invoice to the ledger and run the year end again. It goes without saying that it is so important to make sure that you have posted everything before running the year end and also taken backups. You should only take this action as a last resort and always ensure you have posted every transaction.

How do I back up my Sage data and how often should I do it?

Hopefully, you took backups of your Sage data prior to running your year end? If you did you will be able to restore your data to before doing the year end, you can then update the sales invoice to the ledger and run the year end again. It goes without saying that it is so important to make sure that you have posted everything before running the year end and also taken backups. You should only take this action as a last resort and always ensure you have posted every transaction.
You need to go to ‘File’ in Sage and then choose ‘Backup’ and using ‘Browse’ select the location where you want to backup the data. At PCBS we take a backup after every session as standard to a client specific memory stick which we make available to our clients to take off the premises until our next visit. We also label each backup with the last transaction number in Sage so that it is easy to spot the latest dataset.

Our company has moved to new premises how do I change the address in Sage so that our invoices have the right contact information on them?

Close all open modules in Sage and then go to ‘Tools’ and select ‘Company Preference’ and make the changes you need. You will need administrator rights to do this though.

I have posted a supplier invoice to the ledger twice what should I do?

You should post a credit note with exactly the same details to the supplier’s account. You should then allocate one of the invoices to the credit as explain in question 1.