Financial year end resources and FAQs

Help when preparing for a financial year end in Sage 50 Accounts.

Help with year end

For a smooth year end, use our simple guides.

• Prepare to run your year end
• Run your year end
• Housekeeping tasks after running year end

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Checklist to run year end

We have an article that can help you track each step of your year end.

• Financial year end checklist

We've also listed some common year end queries below: 

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Can you post into a new financial year before running a year end?

You can post into your new financial year before running the Year End option. This means you can keep up to date with current invoices while you finalise your year-end accounts.

• Post into the new financial year before running year end

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How to archive data

You can archive a read-only copy of your company data as part of your year end process.  You can then analyse and report on this archive company without affecting your live data. Don't worry, this doesn't remove any transactions or records from your live data.

• Archive your company data

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Is there a demo of year end?

You can learn more about year end from our expert, where we show you how from start to finish.

• Watch a Sage webinar recording on www.youtube.com

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What happens in the software when you run the year end?

To find out what happens behind the scenes when you run a year end, view the What happens when you run a year end? article.

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Does the year end affect a VAT return?

No. The VAT Return and year end are separate processes.

• Can I reconcile my VAT Return before running my year end?

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Run all of your year end reports at once

You can use the batch reporting feature to run a selection of reports at the click of a button. 

• Batch Reporting

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Warning 'Date entered is outside current financial year'

This message can occur for several reasons when entering a transaction.

• Year end warning: 'Date entered is outside current financial year'

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Prevent postings before a specified date

You may want to stop transactions being posted before a certain date, for example, to close down a previous financial year. You can do this using the Lock Date feature. It stops unwanted postings in the previous period but don't worry, you can still post valid previous adjustments when needed.

• Prevent postings before a specific date

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Can you run a financial year shorter than 12 months?

Yes. If your financial year has changed and you need it to start or end it at a different time, you can change this in your software.

• How to shorten the financial year

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How to produce aged debtors/creditors reports as of my year end date

You may want to see what your customers owed you, or what you owe your suppliers at your year end date.

• How to find your year end debtor and creditor balances

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Can you run management reports for a previous financial year?

You can use your archive data, or the transactional management reports to run your Trial Balance, Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss reports for a previous financial year.

• Running management reports for a previous financial year

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Should you reconcile your bank account before running the year end?

You can run the bank reconciliation at any time and it's not mandatory to run it before your year end.

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Delete old records after running year end

After running your year end is a good time to do some tidying up and removing older items you no longer need. These tasks aren't essential but may be beneficial. 

• Tidy up your data after year end

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Can you undo a year end?

Before you run your year end, you are prompted to take a backup in the Prepare for Year End section. Provided you do so, and if needed restoring this backup will undo your year end process. 

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