Resetting the accounting balance means a phase when the accounting is started in Procountor. Before starting to use Procountor for accounting, some purchase invoices and bank statements might have arrived to the software. These kind of transactions generate accounting entries to Procountor and they have to be reset to avoid double accounting entries.
The process of resetting the accounting balance is describer in the following picture. More about the other phases of beginning accounting in Procountor can be found here.
1. Creating a VAT summary
- VAT summaries are created first to adjust the income statement and balance sheet.
- Create a VAT summary for all months from which you have to reset the accounting balance. Create the first summary for the earliest month with transactions. Refresh the reporting database after the summaries have been made.
- The VAT summary will transfer the VATs to the VAT liability account.
- To ensure that the software will not suggest these VAT summaries to the next months Tax return for self-assessed tax report, the report should be created to these VAT summaries. Do not send the tax reports but put them to Sent status by clicking the Mark as sent button. If the taxes have been payed from an other software, mark the Tax return for self-assessed taxes invoice as Paid elsewhere at the Payment view of the Tax return for self-assessed taxes report.
- Adjust each accounting page of the Tax return for self-assessed taxes reports to zero which accounting day is after the starting day of the accounting in Procountor. The accounting balance which accounting day is before starting to use Procountor for accounting will be reset in phase 3.
2. Checking account balances
- Check which accounts have a balance other than zero in Procountor. You will quickly see which accounts have a positive or negative balance from Accounting > Reconciliation tools > Accounts and transactions. Refresh the reporting database before running this report.
- The report must be executed up to the actual date of Procountor’s adoption. Please remember to set the starting date far enough back to see all the entries that have been made in Procountor.
3. Reset the accounting balance
Reset the balance of all the accounts before starting the accounting in Procountor. The accounts are reset using either a journal receipt or a journal receipt and the Import accounting data function.
Using a journal
- Export the figures on the left-hand side of the accounting Accounts and transactions report such as PDF or HTML by clicking on In printable form > All accounts.
- The information will then be entered on the journal receipt from this output file. The new journal receipt is created at Accounting > New journal receipt.
- Give the journal a name such as Zero receipt dd.mm.yyyy, and date it to the day preceding the first day of accounting.
- Enter the accounting entries on the journal receipt one at a time, with opposite signs. You can add rows to the journal by clicking on the Add transaction -button.
- Approve the journal as a business transaction.
Using a journal and the Import accounting information function
- Export the figures on the left-hand side of the accounting Accounts and transactions report by clicking on the In printable form > All accounts -button.
- When the file is opened as Excel file the file is in the format of accounting data import file which can be transferred to CSV and imported to Procountor. The account is entered in column A, name of the account in column B, and the sum in column C.
- To eliminate the entries, you must reverse the signs of the figures in column C of the Excel spreadsheet. This will adjust the balance of the account in question to zero.
- The data is imported from Management > Import data. When importing the data, choose Accounting data in the first phase of the import, set the date of the journal to the day preceding the beginning of accounting and approve the journal in the second phase of the import. The Import accounting information function will then generate the journal receipt and the receipt will be imported with status Approved.
4. Checking the success of resetting the accounting balance
- Check the accounting Accounts and transactions report to verify that the balances of all accounts are zero. Please remember to Update the reporting database before executing the report, however.
- Once the account balances have been adjusted to zero, the balances of the income statement and balance sheet can be exported to the system, using a journal receipt dated to the day preceding the beginning of accounting.