Getting Opening balances on Clearbooks 1st year to match my accountants'

Question asked by Paul Barnes 9 years ago

I need to get a few of my opening balances tidied up to match what my accountant has at the last year end before I implemented Clearbooks.

She has the following:

1 Corporation Tax £XXX Cr

How do I get this into Clearbooks as an opening balance? I paid my tax bill for year to 30 Apr 2015 in Jan 16 and explained it dated Jan 16 against Corporation Tax 6501001 (the only Corporation Tax code showing on the drop down box) But it is showing in my P&L report for year 2015-16 - I don't really want Corporation Tax to be in the P&L. The Corporation Tax code on Getting Started balances is for 8503002 - a BS code? Can I move the Bill currently in 6501001 so it doesn't show as a P&L items by putting it against 8503002?

I know I could do it by entering the £XXXcr as a bill dated 30 April 15 but it makes HMRC Corporation Tax a Trade Creditor and it also still leaves it showing as a P&L expense line.

2 Wages overpaid £243.72Dr This was corrected in June 15 pay run (it was to myself so no offended employee!) Should I do it so I become a Trade Debtor as at 30 April? Should I do this as a Bill or a reversing journal - in this instance the £243.72 doesn't match an exact amount so perhaps reverse journal? She has a separate line for Trade Debtors which my trade debtors is balanced to

3 HMRC PAYE £512.06 Cr Again is there another way or should I enter a journal or bill to create HMRC PAYE as a Trade Creditor at year end? Like the above, she already has a Trade Creditor balance that I can reconcile Clearbooks Trade Creditors balance to, so doing this would throw the balance off.

4 Accruals £55,775Cr This is for suppliers' bills not received by year end, so would reverse back on 1 May ready for those bills dated from 1 May onwards. Accountant says I can't enter the Bill and Accrual Date it back to the previous year, and in any case her Accrual is made up of various cost estimates that aren't 100% to what the bills eventually came in at. Should I do this as a journal or series of journals? I don't think I really want to add these as trade creditors - what account codes should I use Dr and Cr.

Any advice on any of the 4 queries welcome!

1 Reply

Hi Paul - without seeing the opening trial balance at the start, and not knowing whether you are using the "Getting started" pages or a journal entry import to bring in opening balances, it's difficult to advise properly on these but here's my thoughts:

  1. Yes the opening balance would be on the 850 account and so this is where you should put the PAY bill created when you paid it, so just edit it and change the code.

  2. Sorry this is confusing, I can't tell how it's been handled and it will also depend on whether you use CB's payroll? If you did and you dealt wit it by underpaying the June pay, then you might be able to use a credit note in the opening balances to offset the June pay bill.

  3. Again if you're using CB payroll then this creates bills to HMRC and so, yes, enter an opening trade creditor.

  4. Accruals should be handled by journal reversing on the 1st of the new year.

It would be a lot easier if your accountant did this for you, after all that's the prime benefit of Cloud accounting, I'd not let most of my clients anywhere near this, not because they are not capable (some are) but it's just a lot quicker if I log in and do it myself.

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