Beginning Balances 3

[270462]

Dear GPS Forum friends, Good day!!

I am ready to enter Begining balances as a cut off date March, 31 for GL PM, IC, BR.
Can anyone tel me what is the best way to start the exercise. Do i have to use System date as March 31, 2004 and enter transactions in GL, PM, IC, BR etc.
Pls. share your experience and expertise. I am new to GPS.
Thanks
Dyna

 

[GPSKid]

Does your fiscal year begin on April 1? If not when?

Gene

 

[270462]

Hi Gene
Thanks, no the fiscal year begins on Jan 1. I will have a cut-off date as March 31 and the system will be put to test for April transactions.
I want to enter op.bal for GL, PM, IC, BR etc before we start transactions for april.
thanks

 

[GPSKid]

Dyna,

There is a lot to think about when setting up GPS for the first time, too much to mention in this forum, but I offer the following suggestions:

1. Look at the setup section for each module in the On Line Manuals (Help -> Online manuals). The setup sections have a lot of info about getting started.

2. In the System Setup Manual read the Company Setup section paying particular attention to the Accounts chapter. When the account structure is setup, you pretty much carve things in stone, so you want to be sure you understand how it works and also allow for future expansion and ect. It is worth paying for a call to GP if you do not understand how it works.

3. Got to Routines -> Checklists -> Pick your module and select a frequency of setup. This will provide a sequential list of things you need to do.

4. Inventory setup seem a little convoluted to me, so study how pricing, account posting, item classes and etc. work before you start.

5. Frequently after setting up a new checkbook, I wind up making a few adjusting entries the first month we do a reconciliation. Don't worry about, go ahead start the checkbook the best you can. Then make sure the first reconcilation is done properly and reconciled to the ledger. It will work smooth after that.

6. When setting a ledger mid-year I frequently will go back to the end of the prior year, enter the year end balance sheet account amounts and do a year-end closing for the prior year. Then I will enter a journal entry to each ledger account, in each month that as passed (Jan, Feb & Mar in your case) for the account change. This way I can test my financial statement setup against the actuals and it also leaves the whole year in place so next year prior year comparisons are available.

7. Study how Item Classes, Vendor Classes, Customer Classes, Employee Classes work. They can save a lot of time if you setup the correct way for business.

Good luck, Gene

 

[MentatDragon]

On inventory, only use the Transaction-Adjustment to enter beginning balances.

On GL, you need to enter your balance sheet as of 12/31 and post, which will establish your beginning balances for the year. Then post net transaction for each month.

I turn off posting to the GL unstil my sub-ledger matches my GL balance. (Inventory stock status matches the value of my inventory accounts. Agings in AP and AR match my GL accounts.)

We usually import open items with the original transaction dates, for AR and AP, but post on 3/31 (your date) with GL posting turned-off, to establish the sub-ledger. But you need Integration Manager to do this unless you want to populate the tables via ODBC which usually creates a "gotcha" later, if you make a mistake. Only populate the work file, so that posting will verify and distribute the transactions appropriatly.

GPSKid makes a lot of good points.

 

[270462]

Thanks friends,

Is it necessary to enter opening balances as of 12/13 and enter subsequent months " single line entry" and close the year. Because, the co. is switching to new Chart of accounts and it will be difficult to map the accounts-i mean old and new. Do i have to enter transactions for all modules from 12/31 and later close the years...oops that may be heavy exercise.
Canot I start from 3/31 as closing entries and enter subsequent transactions.

I know its a start for me and some stupid questions are raised, but its always like this "first time"
Thanks a lot.

 

[jtvance]

My first reaction is yes, but that is because I have an accounting background. It's up to your users, though. In their current financial system, they see the beginning balances on their trial balance report as being the values from the end of the prior fiscal year. If you put beginning balances in GP as of 3/31, that wouldn't be true for the rest of this fiscal year in GP.

I would think the amount of work wouldn't be much different. You still need to create a cross reference from the old account numbers to the new. Once you determine the net activity for each account for each month in the current fiscal year in the old accounting system (from a trial balance report for each month), it's a simple matter to use vlookup in excel to create the journal entry for each pre-conversion month.

 

[270462]

Thanks for the inputs, here are my worries:

1. The co. has reformatted the accounts and is switching to GPs. therefore, monthly summarized balances will be difficult to map. My question: Can I enter opening Balances only, as of March 31-single line entries corresponding to each account using GL Batches and GL Transactions.

2. For PM, can I enter vendor outstanding as of Mar 31, summarized, i.e single invoice OR Outstanding invoices as of the actual date, i.e actual dated invoice.
The manual suggest to enter Payments as unapplied? Did not get what does that mean. will this not offset the Outstanding when applied to invoices-in this case when the payment should be applied.

3. In POP, POs will enter only open POs

4. In BR, if I do the following: enter checkbook balance as of cut-of date. Cash account balance as of cut-off date.
Enter unreconciled checks)as suggested by GPSkids

5. enter Inventory balances via Increase decrease adjustment as of cut-off date (as suggested by GPS kids)

Anyone who has gone thru this, can pls send me the procedure for the entry of beginnging balance in my situation at dynavital@yahoo.com
Thanks

 

[270462]

To all forum friends
Can I have your agreement on my last mail. thanks

 

[GPSKid]

In response to your concerns;

1. If you don't care about doing prior year comparisons or keeping a history of what happened in Jan, Feb & March, then entering March 31 balances will work OK. However, if you do not enter your balance sheet account balances as of December 31 of last year, you are going to get some screw ball year to date account change amounts on the balance sheet.

Having said this, I always seem to end up needing the monthly information sometime in the future. So I think it would be best to make a spreadsheet detailing the reconciliation of the changes in each account month by month and then enter the monthly amounts for Jan, Feb & Feb into Great Plains.

2. Your plan for entering PM balances due as a lump sum will work so long as you vendors know what you are paying. However, I believe entering all open invoices individually is best.

3. Entering only open POP's is fine.

4. Plan for BR is fine.

5. Plan for IV is fine.

One more suggestion. Make a backup copy of your data before setting up each module. Then enter a small amount of the beginning data for a that module. Stop and check to see if everything Looks OK. Run a transaction or two through that module and check again. If all still looks OK, then finish entering the setup data. If you have a problem, then recover the backup data and try again. Work on setting up only one module at a time.