Hello – new user here, trying very hard to get to grips with QuickFile.
I’ve read as many of the other posts as I can find on this topic but I’m still lost. I’m a sole trader with very simple needs, but for dull and largely historical reasons I am VAT-registered. For other dull reasons, I wish to stay that way. Thus, I need a solution for MTD.
When setting an opening balance for my one and only business bank account, the amount just does not appear in the bank account itself – and I do not understand this. I understand that the opening balance amount is posted to ‘Suspense Account’ but I don’t truly understand why this is. I’ve read other suggestions of journaling it as retained profit or whatever (which is what I guess it is, as it’s just money that happens to be sitting in my business account) but, even having done that, the figure doesn’t actually appear in the bank account.
So, in effect, my bank account is under by the opening balance. As an experiment, I did try manually creating a new transaction as ‘Money in’ with the reference ‘Opening balance’ and on the relevant work. Ostensibly that works fine (ie, the bank account now looks ‘correct’ to me) but I fear that if I don’t fully understand this now then I’m simply storing up trouble for later.
So, in brief, how does one get the ‘Opening Balance’, as set through the Modify Bank Account page, to actually appear in the bank account?!
Thank you for treating me gently, even if I do sound like an idiot.
No… that’s the problem. Let’s imagine that my opening balance is £1,000 (which it more or less is): that £1,000 just doesn’t show in the account, so as soon as I enter real transactions, it’s out by £1,000.
Hi,
As Spike says, the opening balance is not shown on the bank account statement page but it is taken into account. When you go to your bank account in quickfile and click more option and settings, can you see your opening balance?
If you don’t say from where the opening balance is coming then it will be shown in your suspense account. But it shouldn’t be there. You must tell quickfile from where the money is coming by creating a journal to bank account and retained profit or money introduced or so.
Okay, thanks. I find that, as a concept, monumentally confusing. Why wouldn’t the specified opening balance show in the statement page? Otherwise, my bank account is forever going to show as being under by £1,000 compared to reality. I just don’t get it.
If you don’t say from where the opening balance is coming then it will be shown in your suspense account. But it shouldn’t be there. You must tell quickfile from where the money is coming by creating a journal to bank account and retained profit or money introduced or so.
…and on this bit, I’m also struggling. Yes, it’s showing in Suspense Account but I don’t really know what that means. Okay, that’s my lack of understanding about accounting, I accept that – but I’m not sure really what to do to fix it.
Hi
Go to chart of accounts (under reports) and scroll down to assets and look for Current bank account ( very likely 1200). Go to the very last page (you may have to change the date at the top of the page, depending when you started to use quickfile).
The very last line should be your opening balance. Click on the blue part of the description, this will open the journal with bank account and suspense account. Click on the little arrow-down drop down menu next to suspense account and chose the account from where the money is coming. Click save.
Is the period locked already you have to unlock it first
As Spike says, the opening balance is not shown on the bank account statement page but it is taken into account. When you go to your bank account in quickfile and click more option and settings, can you see your opening balance?
Sorry, in case I wasn’t clear before… yes, the opening balance is specified in Settings, so I can see it there. But it’s neither shown nor reflected in the bank balance. I can live with the opening balance not being shown on the statement but surely it should be reflected in the balance? Currently, it is not, so my bank account appears to start from £0.
No, it will not. Have you entered any transaction yet? When you enter a transaction this will pickup the opening balance and calculates the new balance by using the opening balance +/- your entered transaction.
Oh gosh – I realise now that this is my mistake. While setting up and experimenting, and in an effort to try to make my QuickFile records match my VAT quarters, I in effect split one invoice for two jobs into half an invoice, for the job that was in my VAT quarter beginning in November (the other job belongs to October, because my VAT quarters are based on job-complete date). So, once I rectified that, I could see my bank balance is now correct.
Of course, quite how to deal with such a situation if I needed to go ‘live’ with QuickFile today would be a whole other matter (but one that I guess I can work around in future by ensuring that completed jobs that span different VAT quarters are issued with distinct invoices).
I hope all that makes sense.
Still not sure whether my journal entry is correct, though:
Thanks folks. So, am I correct in thinking that ‘Suspense Account’ is a kind of holding area for undefined funds? Then, on the journal, by assigning my opening £1,000 to ‘Retained Profits etc’ I am ‘crediting’ my business by that amount and then that £1,000 is then ‘debited’ by (or credited to) ‘Current Account’?
It will automatically be set up with the opening balance, in most cases it’s just a change of nominal code (from the suspense account). So this journal in my screenshot will give me a bank balance of +1,000.00.
It’s worth remembering that bank accounts are backwards in the Chart of Accounts (which is what the journal affects). So a positive on the Chart of Accounts would be a negative on the bank balance, and vise-versa. This is because a bank statement as we know it is actually a view from the bank’s side of things.
Yes, thank you. I’m getting there – even if a lot of this makes my head hurt in ways my 20-year-old Excel spreadsheet never did. But that’s not really the fault of QuickFile! Bloody HMRC and MTD!
