Sage Instant Accounts - changing financial year

[LesleyAnne]

I am incredibly frustrated with Sage Instant Accounts (SIA) and want to avoid purchasing Sage Line 50. I moved from Microsoft Accounts to SIA and set my financial year as Dec 09 (I'm a sole proprietor). What I didn't know is that this would 'lock' the P&L reports and I cannot now generate a P&L report for April 6 2009 to April 5 2010 in order to calculate how much tax I owe HMRC. It will only generate a report from Dec 09 onwards (which is a LUDICROUS limitation in my honest opinion). It figures that if I could change by financial year end to April 09, at least I'd be OK for next year... Any suggestions on how to do this without getting an accountant or SAGE to do it for me for a mere £300 (they are soooo helpful). Also, if I do it myself (if it's possible) is there any likelihood of messing up my data and needing to reenter everything?

Lesley

[johndon68]

You can't do it in Instant but it is a service that I offer for a LOT less than Sage charge - send me a PM and I'll send you details. One thing to bear in mind is that, in Instant, year can't run from the middle of a month so, generally, you have the year end as at 31st March instead which is fine with HMRC.

John

[David Richards]

Any suggestions on how to do this without getting an accountant or SAGE to do it for me for a mere £300 (they are soooo helpful). Also, if I do it myself (if it's possible) is there any likelihood of messing up my data and needing to reenter everything?

Although it's not in Instant, Sage 50 Accounts includes a Transactional P&L report. You can run this for any date range, as it is calculated from each transaction rather than the summary monthly totals. (Obviously this won't work if you have cleared transactions from the audit trail for the period in question.)

If you have a friend/accountant with a multi-company version of Sage 50 Accounts (same or higher version than your Instant), they may be able to print off that report for you - and you won't have to have to change your financial year.

Although probably too late for you; in case it heps anyone else, our free Basics (http://www.tassoftware.co.uk/site/tas_accounts_software/basics) program and our FirstBooks (http://www.tassoftware.co.uk/site/tas_accounts_software/firstbooks) program both have the option of choosing a financial year based on tax years (6 April-5 April).