Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies, UK Edition

Jane E. Kelly, ACMA, is a Chartered Management Accountant, a Sage trainer and the author of Bookkeeping For Dummies, 3rd Edition, and Bookkeeping & Accounting All-in-One For Dummies. Her previous edition of Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies was the UK's most popular guide to the software. Jane also creates online training solutions.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Getting Started with Sage 50 Accounts 5

Chapter 1: Introducing Sage 50 Accounts 7

Looking at the Varieties of Sage 7

Installing the Software 9

Getting what you need before you get started 9

Moving to the installation 10

Setting Up with the Active Setup Wizard 10

Registering Your Software 16

Finding Out How Easy Sage Is to Use 17

Navigating around Sage 17

Exploring the Menu bar 18

Using Wizards 24

Chapter 2: Creating Your Chart of Accounts and Assigning Nominal Codes 25

Understanding as Much as You Need to about Accounting 26

Dabbling in double-entry bookkeeping 26

Naming your nominals 27

Preparing reports 27

Looking at the Structure of Your COA 28

Checking out the default COA 29

Identifying balance sheet codes 31

Looking at profit and loss codes 33

Leaving gaps and mirroring codes 36

Accommodating floating nominals 36

Editing Your COA 37

Amending your COA 37

Creating a new COA 39

Checking Your COA 42

Previewing errors 42

Looking at some common errors 43

Chapter 3: Setting Up Records 45

Choosing How to Create Your Records 45

Getting a quick start using the New icon 46

Following the wizards brick by brick 46

Creating Customer and Supplier Records 46

Setting customer and supplier defaults 49

Deleting customer and supplier records 51

Having a change of view 51

Creating Your Nominal Records 52

Exploring your nominal records 52

Renaming existing nominal records 54

Adding a new nominal record 54

Looking for a nominal record 55

Looking around a nominal record 57

Deleting a nominal code 58

Recording Your Bank Accounts 59

Renaming an existing account 60

Creating a new account 60

Deleting a bank record 62

Getting Your Product Records in Order 62

Creating a product record 63

Editing a product record 65

Deleting a product record 66

Entering a project record 66

Setting Up Fixed Asset Records 68

Chapter 4: Recording Your Opening Balances 71

Timing Your Switch to Sage 72

Obtaining Your Opening Balances 72

Entering Opening Balances Using the Wizard 74

Entering your default date 75

Entering customer and supplier balances 76

Checking the customer and supplier opening balances 77

Reversing the nominal balances in preparation for entering the trial balance 77

Entering the trial balance from your accountant 78

Entering the uncleared transactions for your bank account 80

Checking opening balances against the trial balance from your accountant 81

Checking your data 81

Backing up your data 81

Manually Entering Information 82

Manually recording opening balances 82

Manually recording opening bank balances 83

Manually recording nominal opening balances 84

Putting in opening balances for products 85

Checking Your Opening Balances 87

Printing an opening trial balance 87

Dealing with errors 87

Part 2: Looking into Day-to-Day Functions 89

Chapter 5: Processing Your Customer Paperwork 91

Posting Batch Entry Invoices 91

Creating Credit Notes 94

Registering Payments from Your Customers 96

Giving credit where due – allocating credit notes 99

Recording payments on account 101

Deleting Invoices and Credit Notes 102

Chapter 6: Invoicing Your Customers 103

Deciding on an Invoice Type 104

Creating Invoices 104

Putting in the details 105

Getting to the main attraction 107

Filling in the order details 109

Getting down to the footer details 110

Going over payment details 111

Checking your profit on a product invoice 112

Remembering that Communication Is Key 113

Managing Your Invoice List 114

Printing invoices 114

Using Quick Print 116

Updating ledgers 116

Deleting invoices 118

Saving Time While You Ask for Money 118

Duplicating existing invoices 118

Repeating recurring transactions 118

Using defaults 120

Getting paid faster 120

Chapter 7: Dealing with Paperwork from Your Suppliers 121

Receiving and Posting Invoices 121

Setting up your receiving system 122

Posting invoices 122

Getting Credit 125

Allocating a Credit Note 127

Paying Your Suppliers 128

Printing a Remittance Advice Note 130

Chapter 8: Recording Your Bank Entries 133

Understanding the Different Types of Bank Account 134

Keeping up with current (1200) and deposit (1210) accounts 134

Counting the petty cash (1230) account 135

Handling your cash register (1235) 135

Managing the company credit card (1240) and credit card receipts (1250) 136

Tracking Bank Deposits and Payments 136

Transferring Funds between Accounts 140

Repeating Recurring Entries 141

Going for consistency with your bank entries 141

Repeating customer and supplier payments 144

Making regular journal entries – if you dare 144

Processing and posting recurring entries 145

Dealing with Petty Cash 147

Funding petty cash 147

Making payments from the tin 147

Reconciling the petty cash tin 148

Paying the Credit Card Bill 148

Making credit card payments 148

Reconciling the credit card statement 149

Chapter 9: Maintaining and Correcting Entries 151

Finding Ways to Find Transactions 151

Searching for Records 153

Making Corrections 154

Editing a Journal Entry 156

Deleting a Journal Entry 157

Checking and Maintaining Your Files 158

Checking errors 158

Using Recovery Tools 159

Reindexing data 161

Compressing data 161

Rebuilding data 161

Backing Up Data the Manual Way 161

Scheduling Backups 163

Restoring Data 164

Part 3: Functions for Plus and Professional Users 167

Chapter 10: Processing Sales Orders 169

Giving a Quote 169

Amending your invoice and order defaults 170

Creating a quotation 170

Allocating and amending stock for a quote 172

Converting a quotation to an invoice or order 172

Creating a Sales Order 173

Entering the sales order details 174

Dealing with cash sales 177

Editing your order 178

Putting sales orders on hold 179

Duplicating a sales order 179

Printing the order 180

Allocating Stock to an Order 180

Going on automatic 180

Assigning stock yourself 181

Amending the allocation of stock 181

Using the shortfall generator 182

Despatching Orders 183

Completing an order 183

Using goods despatched notes 183

Using the despatch facility 184

Recording a despatch manually 184

Invoicing Your Customers 185

Deleting and Cancelling Sales Orders 186

Deleting an order 186

Cancelling an order 187

Chapter 11: Processing Purchase Orders 189

Creating, Changing and Copying a Purchase Order 190

Creating a purchase order 190

Editing your order 192

Duplicating a purchase order 193

Placing the Goods on Order 194

Ordering via the conventional method 194

Manually placing goods on order 195

Completing Your Purchase Order 196

Printing Your Purchase Order 197

Getting the Goods In 198

Using goods received notes 198

Accepting delivery of everything 200

Taking in part of an order 200

Creating an Invoice from an Order 201

Deleting, Cancelling and Reinstating Orders 203

Deleting orders 203

Cancelling orders 204

Putting a cancelled order back on order 204

Chapter 12: Keeping Track of Your Products 205

Taking Stock 205

Importing your stocktake 207

Adjusting stock levels 208

Checking stock activity 208

Using the stock shortfall facility 209

Understanding a Bill of Materials 210

Creating a BOM 211

Checking stock availability for a BOM 213

Transferring stock for a BOM 214

Processing Stock Returns 215

Allocating Stock 217

Changing stock allocation 219

Issuing allocated stock 219

Chapter 13: Managing Projects 221

Appointing a Project’s Status and Costs 222

Assigning status 222

Looking at costs – types and codes 223

Changing status and costs 224

Managing Project Resources 225

Creating or amending a resource 226

Deleting a resource 226

Tracking Project Costs 227

Sharing out project charges 227

Issuing stock to a project 228

Counting costs from a supplier invoice 230

Integrating POP with project costing 230

Analysing Project Costs 232

Looking at the project’s activity 232

Comparing costs and budget 234

Charging Your Customers for a Project 235

Completing Your Project 236

Chapter 14: Using Foreign Currencies 239

Setting Up Foreign Currencies 240

Entering the exchange rate for a currency 240

Amending the Countries table 242

Tailoring the Foreign Trader Tool 243

Keeping Trade Status in Mind When Setting Up Accounts 244

Processing the Paperwork 245

Raising invoices, credit notes and orders 246

Entering batch invoices and credit notes 248

Banking on Foreign Currencies 249

Coping with customer receipts and supplier payments 249

Carrying out a bank transfer 251

Expecting changing exchange rates 253

Doing Revaluations with the Wizard 254

Part 4: Running Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Routines 257

Chapter 15: Reconciling Your Bank Accounts 259

Recognising Reasons to Reconcile 260

Using Bank Feeds to Post Data into Sage 261

Setting up bank feeds 261

Downloading your bank transactions 263

Reconciling your downloaded transactions 264

Double-checking everything 267

Manually Entering Your Bank Account Data 267

Using e-Banking to Import Data 268

Doing the Reconciliation 269

Troubleshooting When Your Account Doesn’t Reconcile 274

Rounding Up Stragglers 275

Chapter 16: Running Your Monthly and Yearly Routines 277

Adding Up Accruals 278

Counting Out Prepayments 280

Depreciating Fixed Assets 282

Writing down your assets 282

Posting assets and depreciation 284

Entering Journals 284

Completing journals 285

Rattling skeleton journals 286

Reversing journals 287

Carrying Out Your Month-End Routine 288

Ticking off your checklist 288

Running the month-end 289

Clearing stock transactions 291

Deleting stock 292

Clearing the audit trail 293

Managing Cash Flow 294

Doing a Year-End Routine 295

Chapter 17: Running Your VAT Return 297

Understanding Some VAT Basics 298

Knowing your outputs from your inputs 298

Cracking the codes 298

Comparing Sage’s VAT accounting methods 299

Managing Your VAT 301

Preparing your VAT return 301

Reconciling your VAT return 304

Checking Your VAT Return Using Reconciliation Reports 306

Checking under the standard scheme 306

Checking with cash accounting 308

Getting ready to reconcile after checking 308

Completing Your VAT return 309

Posting the VAT transfer 311

Submitting your VAT return 311

Posting your refund or payment in Sage 313

Investigating Other Useful Icons in Your VAT Module 313

Posting scale charges 313

Reporting Intrastat 314

Completing the EC Sales list 315

Understanding the Reverse Charge Sales list 315

Running a VAT audit 316

Accessing verification reports 317

Part 5: Using Reports 319

Chapter 18: Running Monthly Reports 321

Making the Most of Standard Reports 321

Checking the Chart of Accounts 322

Figuring Out the Financial Reports 322

Trying for an initial trial balance 323

Accounting for profit and loss 324

Comparing profits and losses 325

Weighing the balance sheet 327

Viewing the Audit Trail 328

Forgetting the Periods and Going Transactional 330

Going by date 330

Being number-friendly 331

Running the reports 331

Designing Reports to Suit Yourself 332

Chapter 19: Tackling the Complicated Stuff 337

Exporting Data 337

Sending spreadsheet stuff 338

Transferring Outlook contacts 338

Exporting to Word 339

Importing Data 341

Linking to Your Accountant 344

Sending accounts to your accountant 345

Making material changes 345

Getting back adjustments and narratives 346

Trying e-Banking 346

Configuring your e-Banking 347

Opting for e-payments 348

Reconciling electronically 351

Working with Document Manager 353

Adding attachments and filing system references 353

Deleting attachments 354

Chapter 20: Running Key Reports 355

Checking Activity through the Nominal Codes 355

Looking into Supplier Activity 358

Tracking Customer Activity 360

Checking Numbers with Supplier Daybook Reports 361

Finding the Customers Who Owe You 362

Paying Attention to Your Creditors 364

Handling Unreconciled Bank Transactions 366

Doing a Monthly Breakdown of Profit and Loss 369

Ranking Your Top Customers 370

Chapter 21: Going Mobile 373

Setting Up Sage Drive 373

Tackling Sage 50 Tracker 375

Installing Sage 50 Tracker 375

Looking at the Sage 50 Tracker dashboard 377

Sussing Out Sage 50 Mobile Sales 379

Keeping Connected with Connected Users 380

Part 6: The Part of Tens 381

Chapter 22: Ten (Okay, Eleven) Funky Functions in Sage 383

Browsing for Help with F1 384

Calculating Stuff with F2 384

Accessing an Edit Item Line for Invoicing with F3 384

Finding Multiple Functions with F4 384

Calculating Currency or Checking Spelling with F5 385

Copying with F6 385

Inserting a Line with F7 386

Deleting a Line with F8 386

Calculating Net Amounts with F9 386

Launching Windows with F11 387

Opening Report Designer with F12 387

Chapter 23: Ten (Plus One) Wizards to Conjure Up in Sage 389

Creating a New Customer Account 389

Setting Up a New Supplier 390

Initiating a New Nominal Account 390

Creating a New Bank Account 391

Launching a New Product 391

Starting Up a New Project 392

Helping Out at Month End: Opening/Closing Stock 392

Fuelling Up: Scale Charges 392

Saving Time: Global Changes 393

Handling Currencies: Foreign Bank Revaluation 394

Keeping Others in the Loop: Accountant Link 394

Index 397