Automated email reminders for customers on Sage Line 50 / Sage Instant

The good thing is that, if you already have Excel, this will cost you nothing. The idea goes like this:

• In the Memo field in the Sage Customer Record, start a dedicated line with something like "#Service date:" and then enter, say, 0630 for the 30th of June each year.
• Run an Excel macro periodically to identify and automatically email customers where the Memo field indicates that the next service is due soon.

SMS messages are possible too, but you may need to pay for each message sent.

Please drop me a note if you are interested in the Excel file that will facilitate this functionality.

Sage Line 50 / Instant month end reporting using Onion Reporting Software's Onion product

One of the issues users frequently ask about is how they can monitor any “back postings” made in Sage since their previous monthly reporting cycle.  For example, a business may have a reporting cycle that produces reports for a month end five working days after that month end.  Using Onion as the reporting option will produce month by month spend figures for each month in the year to date as at working day five of the new month.  If, on working day six of the new month, a late posting is made to the previous month, how is the user of the Onion reporting pack next month to be made aware of the prior month posting?

The [Onion info] sheet of each Onion workbook records the “Last transaction number” at the time of workbook creation.  This identifies the cut-off point for the reporting pack.  The next time an Onion workbook is created, the user can ask to have postings made after that cut-off point identified in the new Onion workbook. The user ticks a check box, provides the last transaction number from the previous reporting pack, and runs the report. On completion the user can set the NEW_POST filter on the [TB Pivot (YTD)] sheet to Y to see what months have been posted to since the last report. Double clicks on the month totals will show the transaction detail of what was posted.

Sage Line 50 / Sage Instant e-reconcile - it can work well for you

At first sight Sage's e-reconcile option doesn't seem all that attractive. The main reasons for not adopting (in no particular order) are:

1. Banks normally charge extra for the statement files facility;
2. e-reconcile doesn't allow the matching of offsetting receipts and payments records in the cashbook;
3. e-reconcile only allows one-to-many or many-to-one matching - you can't match many-to-many; and,
4. e-reconcile doesn't allow the matching of bank errors and their correction on the bank statement.

All of the above are easily countered:

1. Banks normally charge extra for the statement files facility: My post at e-reconcile for everyone in Sage Line 50 / Sage Instant explains how any bank's basic statement export facility (e.g. CSV, xml or Excel format) can be used in e-reconcile. No extra cost. 
2. e-reconcile doesn't allow the matching of offsetting receipts and payments records in the cashbook: OK, take the receipts and payments you need to clear against each other (because they'll never appear on a bank statement and you don't want them to be listed as outstanding forever) and make sure the net total is zero (say Receipts = £1,000 and Payments = £1,000. Net = Zero). When matching a single payment include the extra payment transactions totalling £1,000 and, when prompted with "Match though totals differ?", click on Yes. Then match a single receipt and include the extra receipt transactions totalling £1,000 and, when prompted with "Match though totals differ?", click on Yes. The two "matching errors" net to zero and everything will be OK.
3. e-reconcile only allows one-to-many or many-to-one matching - you can't match many-to-many: This scenario requires a response similar to 2 above. Higlight the multiple statement items and multiple cashbook items you want to reconcile and make sure the totals are the same. Then de-select all but one statement item and only one cashbook item (noting their transaction numbers for future reference) and match them clicking on Yes when prompted with "Match though totals differ?". Then select the bank statement and cashbook items whose transaction numbers you noted earlier and match them in the same way. The two "matching errors" net to zero and everything will be OK.
4. e-reconcile doesn't allow the matching of bank errors and their correction on the bank statement: To deal with errors on the bank statement (and their corrections) that never appear in the cashbook - post them to the cashbook as soon as the initial error appears on the bank statement. Say erroneous charges of £10 were applied to your account. Enter a journal for £10 Dr (erroneous charge by bank) and £10 Cr (erroneous charge correction awaited from bank) and code both sides to the bank account code. Then reconcile the erroneous charge entry with the bank statement leaving you with an outstanding receipt for £10 (the awaited correction on the bank statement) to reconcile when the correction is actioned by the bank.

e-reconcile has so many advantages, not least the auto-reconcile features and being able to sort both sets of transactions by amount to facilitate the easy identification of matches. If you haven't tried it before why not put a month's bank transactions into the practice company and activate e-reconcile, import a bank statement (remember 1 above) and give it a try. Most people don't go back to manual if they try it.

Sage Aged Debtor and Aged Creditor reporting in Excel

See the YouTube video showing Onion Reporting Software's comprehensive Aged Debtor and Aged Creditor reports produced from Sage Instant or Sage Line 50 accounting data by their Onion software.

Sage Departmental reporting in Excel

See the YouTube video showing Onion Reporting Software's free complementary template and how it interacts with the Onion workbook produced from Sage Instant or Sage Line 50 accounting data by their Onion software. 

Sage Line 50 / Sage Instant opening bank balances

There seem to be a lot of questions about recording opening TBs in Sage on various forums. I'm not sure if I've ever seen any comment on the most convenient way to record the opening bank balance (say account 1200), so this short post describes a good way to approach it. 

Assume the closing TB at 31 March 2014 shows a debit of £95 in account 1200 and assume the closing bank reconciliation as at 31 March 2014 looks as follows:

Bank Statement balance	100
Less: Outstanding payments
Cheque 100001	(10)
Add: Outstanding lodgements
Ldg 999999	5
Cash Book balance	95

The bank statement balance represents items that are already fully reconciled, the outstanding cheque and the outstanding lodgement represent unreconciled items.

I've found the best way to set the bank (1200) account up is to enter the bank statement balance of £100 initially by clicking on the OB icon to the right of the Current Balance field in the Balance section of the Account Details tab of the Bank Record for the 1200 account. The date should be changed to 31/03/2014 and £100 entered as a receipt (it would be entered as a payment if the bank statement showed an overdrawn position). After saving, this will show account 1200 as Dr 100 and account 9998 (Suspense) as Cr 100.

Next, in bank payments, enter a payment on 31/03/2014 with the following attributes: Ref - 100001; N/C - 9998; Details - Outstanding cheque; Net - 10; T/C - T9. Save the payment. Then, in bank receipts, enter a receipt on 31/03/2014 with the following attributes: Ref - 999999; N/C - 9998; Details - Outstanding lodgement; Net - 5; T/C - T9. Save the receipt. 

This will leave account 1200 with a balance of Dr 95 at 31/03/2014 which agrees with the TB as at that date, and a balance of Cr 95 in account 9998. When the rest of the TB is entered account 9998 will reduce to zero.

The bank reconciliation should be started by entering the last reconciled bank statement balance as 100 on the 31/03/2014. The bank reconciliation report will then reflect the table above.

I hope this helps.

P.S. If you have payments on account that need to show up on Debtor / Creditor accounts you'll need to alter the methodology to incorporate a customer receipt or a supplier payment instead of a bank receipt or a bank payment. These will form part of the take-on of open items to establish the opening Debtors and Creditors ledger control account balances. The reconciled status of each receipt / payment recorded should be accurately reflected and appropriate adjustments made to the opening bank balance methodology recorded above.  Please feel free to ask any questions you may have regarding your own particular circumstances.

E-reconcile for everyone in Sage Line 50 / Sage Instant

I was using the manual bank reconciliation feature in Sage Instant Accounts the other day and found it to be a bit laborious marking cash book transactions off one by one.  I don't subscribe to the file transfer module offered by my bank (for an extortionate amount of money) so I thought the e-Banking, e-Reconcile option was out. 

However, then I remembered some work I'd done some considerable time ago where bank accounts with tens of thousands of transactions had to be reconciled in a different software package.  The only statement information available was a csv file containing statement date, reference and amount.  I constructed an Excel macro to create a statement file similar to the ones produced by the bank's file transfer module (http://www-2.danskebank.com/Link/CAPDBUK/$file/CAP_DB_BRAND_UK.pdf) and, hey presto, I was able to import the necessary tens of thousands of bank statement transactions and get to work. 

Thinking about my Sage situation I realised that an ordinary set of transactions saved from my basic electronic banking screens will give me a csv file containing statement date, reference and amount. Consequently, I dusted down the old Excel routine and ran a month's statement transactions through it. I enabled e-Banking within Sage and imported the statement details using the file I'd created.  Now I am able to use the auto reconcile features within Sage!  Nice. Even better, I find that, with a bit of pre-processing in the Excel routine, I can maximise the "full match" (reference and amount) success rate and cut down manual matching to a minimum.

It should be possible to use this methodology for any bank account, so I'm planning to implement this approach for all Sage bank accounts where file transfer facilities don't exist with the bank.  I like to have software do as much work for me as possible so this fits in with my overall stratregy pretty well.

P.S. if you use Sage you may also be interested in this Excel reporting tool I've written - www.onionrs.co.uk. A video is available on YouTube.