Run the trial balance and set the lock date

This is step 7 of 7 to set up your clients with Sage Accounting.

Get your client's trial balance up to date

Run a trial balance along with outstanding customer and supplier transactions before entering the current period data to make sure the starting point matches your client's previous bookkeeping software's closing point.

1. To open the report page select Reporting.
2. Select Trial Balance.
3. Select the period date required. The options in the Period field are to see balances “as of” a specific date or to see movements in and out of the accounts for analysis.

Adjust Opening and closing balances

You may also want to add these adjustment options to the criteria:

This period only or Show opening & closing balances.

•  Select This period only to see only movement in the selected period without the opening and closing balances. To include them, select Show opening & closing balances.
• When you select Show opening & closing balances, the report includes all entries made before the selected period, including entries from the previous financial year. By default, these show in the balances for the ledger accounts where the entries were posted in the Opening Balance column.
• When Show opening & closing balances is selected, you can also tick the Summarise profit and loss values option. If you tick this option, a summarised Profit and Loss line is added to the Trial Balance report. This option summarises Profit and Loss balances for all previous years on one line with the current year’s Profit and Loss activity listed below by each account.

Lock down the previous period

1. Select Settings.
2. Select Accounting Dates & VAT.
3. Enter the last day of the new financial year in the Year End Date field.
4. Enter a date in the Year End Lockdown field to stop new transactions being saved before this.
5. Select Save.

If you later realise you need to enter a transaction in the previous year, you can delete the date in the Year End Lockdown field.