Calculate the net amount from the gross

We've now made it easier to enter transactions when you only know the gross amount.

Rather than having to workout the amount of VAT, just enter the gross amount in the Total field and press Enter. We calculate the VAT and Net for you.

You can do this for the following transaction types

• Money out

• Money in

Read more about calculating the net amount from the gross

Easily edit reconciled receipts and payments

Ever completed a bank reconciliation and realised you made a mistake?

You can now edit a reconciled payment or receipt. This includes changing the bank account, date, and amount.

Just edit the receipt or payment from the bank activity.

Depending on what you change, we will

• Unreconcile and update the transaction ready for you to check and reconcile again.

• Update the starting balance of your next reconciliation to reflect the change.

• Tell you a receipt or payment has been edited when you check a completed reconciliation.

Read more about editing reconciled bank transactions

Effortlessly delete reconciled bank transactions

Continuing with our improvements to correcting transactions, you can now delete reconciled bank transactions.

Simply delete the bank transaction in the usual way. We will

• Display a message to tell you that the transaction is reconciled.

• Show you that the transaction is deleted when you view the completed bank reconciliation

• Update the starting balance of your next bank reconciliation to reflect the deleted transaction.

Read more about deleting bank transactions

Easily correct cleared transactions

We've made correcting cleared transactions quicker and easier.

Now no need to remove the remove the cleared status first. Simply edit or delete a cleared transaction in the usual way.

Find out more about cleared transactions.

Save time when creating transactions

We’ve improved the look and functionality of the Quick Create button. Use this button as a short cut to quickly access the page you need to create the relevant transaction. This saves you time when you're in a hurry and is great for colleagues who are new to Accounting Start.

Showing transactions with attachments

Easily check which sales and purchase transactions have attachments.

The new Attachments column shows the number of attachments per transaction. This saves you time, as you no longer need to open a transaction to see if it has attachments.

You can find the new column on the Sales Invoices, Sales Credit Notes, Purchase Invoices, and Purchase Credit Note pages. Select the header to sort the column by number of attachments, which helps you to find transactions.

You can use Configure Columns (located to the left of the header row) to change the order of the columns. If you don't want to see a column, you can simply remove them from the view.

Showing or hiding the Attachments column also affects your exported CSV files. If the column shows and you export to a CSV file, it will include the number of attachments per transaction. If you don't want this, remove the column from the view before exporting.

Improved bank statement import

If your bank statement fails to import, Accounting Start will now open an error list page. The list includes the transaction number, column, data, and reason for each error. Use this information to go right to an issue, fix it, and get your transactions imported.

Find out more about importing a bank statement.

Mobile app improvements

New 12.5% VAT rate

From 1st October the VAT rate hospitality, holiday accommodation and attractions changes to 12.5%.

To support this, we've added a new VAT rate called Lower Rate 2.

Any transactions related to hospitality, holiday accommodation and attractions which used the Lower Rate of 5%, will now need to use the new 12.5% rate from 1st October.

Find out more about when to use the new rate

Logo customisation

To ensure your invoice accurately reflect your company's brand, we've simplified the upload and adjustment of logo's when customising your invoice.

• We've removed the size limit of 1 MB for logo images and

• Once uploaded, you can easily reposition the image in the preview area or zoom in or out to get it looking just right.

• If you need to start over, just reset the image.

From Settings, then Business Settings, select Logo and Templates under Document Preferences to try it out.

Payroll and Accounting integration

If you have previously migrated from another software provider, or another Sage product, such as Sage 50 Accounts, you can now integrate Accounting Start and Payroll.

If you subscribe to both Accounting and Payroll, details of your wages can be automatically recorded in Accounting, each time you complete a pay run in Payroll.

For more information about how to set up the integration, see Change from manual to automatic payroll journals

Reconciling bank accounts

To make bank reconciliation easier, we've moved the Reconcile button. To access it, go to Banking and then select a bank account. It is now located to the left of the New Entry button.

Previously, you opened the Connect to Bank (or New Transactions, if you have a bank feed) menu and then selected Reconcile.

EU Goods and Services update

To make adding EU Goods and Services easier, we’ve changed the way you add them to sales invoices. The EU Goods and Services field now displays on the invoice page when needed, so you can add them to each item line.

Changes to how you access your subscription invoices

You will receive an invoice every month with the charges for your Sage subscription.

We'll either send your invoice by email to the business owner registered with your account or add your invoice to the Business Account area of Settings.

To learn more about accessing your subscription invoices see Manage your subscription and services.

Search with less information

Find the contact you're looking for with less information. To make life a little bit easier, enter a contact's address (or partial address), their main or mobile phone number, or just their primary name in the Search field on contact lists to find them quickly.

We've also updated the Search field on the Audit Trail report to search by transaction number so you can quickly track down the history of an entry. This comes in handy when you quickly need to find transactions that show on your VAT returns.

Easily improve your documents

To make document customisation easier, we've moved document settings to their own section on the Settings page. With this change, we've also renamed some groups to better explain the settings within.

These are the settings groups in the new section with their old and new names:

Previously, these settings were located in the Invoice & Business Preferences section, which is renamed to Business Preferences.

Show more rows in grids and lists

Get a clearer view of your transactions and display up to 100 rows by default on list pages (such as Sales Invoices) throughout Accounting Start.

From Settings, then Business Settings, choose Navigation and Data Grids, and then select 100 in the Tables of Data section.

Override this as needed by selecting a number in the footer of a list page.

Back button in Banking

Easily navigate back to the Banking page with the new Back to Banking button.

Shown in the top toolbar, this allows to get bank to your bank accounts.

Preview your invoices

Get a quick preview sales invoices before you send them

Select Print Preview and view the invoice in another tab in your browser.

Summary of changes for Brexit

Find out what actions you need to take before 1st January and the other changes made to Sage Accounting to support Brexit.

Legislation changes due to Brexit will affect the tax and transaction types you use in Sage Accounting, the following areas are affected:

• Northern Ireland contacts

• Customers and suppliers not registered for VAT

• Recurring sales invoices

• Other payments and receipts

• Quick entries

• Bank rules

• EC Sales List Report

To find out more, visit our Brexit support pages

We’ve made these great improvements to the Trial Balance report:

• As of option. You can now run the report “as of” a specific date to get a snapshot of what your nominal ledger account balances were on that date. The report will show data from the start of each account up to the selected date.
• Zero balance accounts option. The new Hide accounts with zero balances option allows you to hide (or show) zero balance ledger accounts on the report. These accounts have been posted to but have a net balance of zero in the reporting period. By default, the option is selected, which hides them on the report.

• Retained Earnings breakdown. If you select Summarise profit and loss values, a Profit and Loss line is included on the report. You can now expand the row to see a breakdown of how the summarised amount was calculated. The report splits out the system calculated Profit and Loss values and manual postings to the Profit and Loss account.

Adding logos to invoices

We’ve made it even easier to add logos to your sales documents. Now when you upload a logo, it’s automatically checked to make sure the size of the file and the quality of the image are suitable.

If the image isn’t quite right, we'll tell you what needs changing.

Remind customers how they can pay you

Need to let your customers know how they can pay you?

For online invoices where you're not using online payments, you'll now see the following message: Please contact us if you are unsure how to make a payment.

If you are using online payments, we'll add a Make Payment button, to encourage your customers to pay straight away.

Zero value invoices removed from lists

Are invoices with a zero value cluttering up your invoice list?

We've improved how we handle these so they no longer show as Overdue and don't appear on the Overdue and Outstanding tabs of your invoice list.

See when invoices haven't been sent to all recipients

Not sure whether an invoice has been sent to everyone?

Now you can see when an invoice hasn't been sent and when to re-send or check out your email addressees.

The Activity grid now shows an Amber warning when not all email messages were delivered.

Page headers added to longer reports

We know it's hard to read reports that run over several pages, so we’ve improved some reports to show headers on every page:

• Profit and Loss Beta
• Aged Debtors
• Aged Creditors
• Aged Debtors Breakdown
• Aged Creditors Breakdown
• Trial Balance
• Customer statements