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COASETUP

 

Initializing Balances in the Chart of Accounts

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PART 1: Enter Month-End Balances for Balance Sheet Accounts:

Assets, Liabilities & Equities.

These are the accounts in the 100's, 200's 300's (or those

starting with 1, 2 or 3 if you use accounts with more than three

digits.)

 

You should know the month-end balances for these accounts for

each month-end of the current fiscal year and for the month-end

of the previous fiscal year.

 

From the Main Menu, choose Enter/Edit Chart of Accounts (Choice

8, 5, 1). Type in an account code and when asked if you "Do you

want to enter totals for previous months?" answer Yes.

 

In the bin for "This Month" as well as "1 Month Ago", type the

previous month's closing balance. Note that the current month bin

("this month") will later be recalculated based on the 1 Month

Ago balance plus any activity from the current month.

 

In the 2 Months Ago bin, type in the closing balance from the

month before last (example: If you are in March, this would be

the month-end balance for January). Continue this procedure as

far back as you like ' up to 24 months.

 

Repeat these steps for each asset, liability and equity account.

 

 

PART 2: Enter Previous Month Totals for Transaction Accounts:

Revenues, Cost of Goods Purchased and Operating Expenses. These

are the accounts in the 400's, 500's and 6-900's (or those

starting with 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 if you use accounts with more

than three digits.)

 

2-A) If you know the totals of the income and expense for these

accounts for each previous month, you can simply type in the

totals. This is done from the same screen described above in Part

1, but for each monthly bin, you type in the total for just that

single month. If you don't want to type in the values for all the

previous months, you could type in the year-to-date total in just

the 1 Month Ago bin. Do not consider the current month's values;

these will be derived from actual transactions in the checkbook

file or other transactions.

 

If you have done step 2-A by simply typing in previous months'

expenses and income, you can skip the rest of this document.

 

2-B) On the other hand, you can record all the checks and

invoices and general journal entries one-by-one so you have a

record of each transaction. After entering all the checks and

other transactions, you will want to summarize them so they can

be posted to the chart of accounts balances for previous months.

For example, you can use the Write a Check screen (choice 5,5,1

from the Main Menu) or the Enter a General Journal Entry screen

(choice 5,5,7.) Next follow section 2-C or 2-D below.

 

2-C) To print a checkbook and general journal report summed by

expense code, select Checkbook Reports (option 5,5,7). Change

choice 1 to say "All accounts and GJ entries". Select a date

range for a single month (ie 1/1/2004 to 1/31/2004). Change the

output method to Compressed an Start the report. When prompted

'Do you want to match the income statement', select Yes. From the

report, you can fill these monthly totals as per the instructions

above in section 2-A. You will need to repeat this report for

other months.

 

2-D) Instead of running the report and then manually typing in

the totals as described in section 2-C, you could run a utility

program to summarize the checkbook and general journal entries

and automatically fill in the monthly totals.

 

From the Main menu, go to the Utilities menu. In regular

Shopkeeper, press U at the Main Menu. In Shop-Pro, choose

Miscellaneous options from the Exit menu, then choose Utilities.

From the list of utilities choose the one called EXPENS and the

following screen will appear:

 

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º  Utility to recalc expenses:  (Accts starting with 5,6,7,8,9)º

º                                                              º

º   Currently you are in period number:                        º

º  What is the closing date for the current period             º

º  What period is January?                                     º

º  What month/year needs to be recalculated?                   º

º  How many months ago in the chart of accounts is that:       º

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If your fiscal year begins in January, the current month is

Jan=1, Feb=2 etc. If your fiscal year begins in June, Jan=7,

Feb=8 etc.

 

The closing date for the current period would be the last day of

the month. For example,

if you are still effectively in the February sales period even

though it is really March, the closing date of the "current

month" would be 02/28/2004.

 

What month/year needs to be recalculated? you need to pick a

single month at a time. It doesn't matter what month and year you

select but it is best to select them in order to avoid confusion.