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How it works

In Sage 50 Accounts you can only have a financial year of 12 months, if your financial year has changed, and you need to shorten your financial year, you have to move the start date back to represent the new end date.

Year	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	21	21	21
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
Current				Start											End
New	Start *											End

Watch the video

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How the balances are recalculated

When you use the Financial Year option to change the start date of your financial year the following changes occur:

• The monthly nominal code balances are rebuilt based on the transactions that appear on your audit trail
• The year to date turnover figures for your customers and suppliers are recalculated based on the transactions on your audit trail
• The monthly sales balances on the product records are recalculated based on the product transactions

NOTE: Running the Financial Year Change option removes all prior year and budget values from the nominal codes. Without this information you can't produce Prior Year or Budget reports. However, for standard budgeting and prior year values, it's possible to retain this information. To do this you need to:

1. Export your nominal ledger using the Nominal Record CSV (Extended) report. 
2. Adjust to allow for the shift in months.
3. Import the amended data. For more information about file import, please refer to this guide.

If you want the new financial year to start in January 2021, set the financial year to January 2020.

For example, if the new shortened financial year starts in January 2021 this would mean running the standard year end reports as at end of December 2020.

• Trial balance
• Profit & loss
• Balance sheet
• Aged debtors
• Aged creditors

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Change the financial year start date

When you change the financial year start date it must be set to the previous year.

For example, if you want the new financial year to start in January 2021, set the financial year to January 2020.

1. Click Settings, click Financial Year then click Change.
2. Click Yes to the prompt regarding backups and check data.
3. Click Yes to the prompt regarding nominal historical data.
4. Set the required financial year start month and year. For example, if you want the new financial year to start in January 2021, set the financial year to January 2020.
5. Click OK, click Yes, click OK then click OK again.

NOTE: You can run financial reports for the shortened financial year period. The reports shouldn't be run for the whole financial year as the P&L will have no resemblance to what it was or should be at this point as the figures would be calculated based on the Sage Financial Year.

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Run the Year End

This clears the profit and loss figures up to and including the year end date and advances the financial year start date to the required start date.

1. Back up your data.
2. Click Tools, click Period End then click Year End and click Run Year End.
   
   For a complete guide to running the year end, please refer to the help centre, Your guide to year end in Accounts.