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Opening Balance Sheet does not balance!
My balance sheets do not currently balance - this appears to be due to the opening values, specifically Capital Assets.
I've entered a value in the Opening Balances screen for "Asset Pool Value" (which admittedly appears under a heading of "Corporation Tax Returns"). This value was lifted from the Net Book Value in my company's accounts made up to y/e 31/12/2005 (my FAC start date is 1/1/2006).
I would have expected this value to have appeared on the Capital Assets line on the opening balance sheet (as indeed it does in the published accounts).
Am I missing something? Or is FreeAgent? ;o)
I've entered a value in the Opening Balances screen for "Asset Pool Value" (which admittedly appears under a heading of "Corporation Tax Returns"). This value was lifted from the Net Book Value in my company's accounts made up to y/e 31/12/2005 (my FAC start date is 1/1/2006).
I would have expected this value to have appeared on the Capital Assets line on the opening balance sheet (as indeed it does in the published accounts).
Am I missing something? Or is FreeAgent? ;o)
I’m almost enjoying doing my accounts!
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Inappropriate?James,
As you probably suspect, the Corporation Tax Asset Pool Value is not the same as the opening Net Book value.
It's used solely for working out CT Capital Allowances, and is normally different from the opening net book value because of the differences between normal depreciation and what's allowed by way of Capital Allowances.
(You can tell we recently worked this out ourselves, can't you? ;0>)
In FreeAgent, Capital Assets need to be entered individually (or at least in groups of things bought in the same year undergoing the same depreciation rate) because of the possible variation in age, depreciation etc which we can't determine just from an opening balance.
So I'm afraid you'll need to work out how your Net Book Value was calculated - if you can't reproduce it just let us know - it may be because we don't (yet) support the type of deprecation your accountant is using.
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Inappropriate?NBV was based on 25% per annum write down, but as assets were purchased before my FAC start date I don't have any bank transactions to flag as purchase of assets.
I see your point about depreciation rates, year of purchase etc - you'd need 3 variables per asset (group). Tricky to implement - and would clutter the opening balance screen - perhaps you could have a button taking you to a "opening capital assets" screen?
In the meantime I could always create manual entries I suppose, but I prefer a clean start point - i.e. set a start date, enter opening values, then upload transactions occurring after the start date.
Or I could just bite the bullet and move FAC start date to back to date of company formation and (almost) everything will have a starting balance of zero - just means loading a couple of years worth of statements, invoices, mileage & expense claims - that's all!
I’m not enjoyng doing my accounts
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Inappropriate?James,
You'll still have a clean start date - just enter them manually and they'll be ignored except as capital assets.
We may move to having multiple classes of capital assets, each with their own depreciation rate, for which an opening balance would make sense.
If so, we'll make sure everyone's existing situation is correctly transferred across to the new model.
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Hi Ed,
I have a slightly similar issue in that I need to get the opening balance sheet to balance and the Fixed Assets section on FAC is wrong. I've entered manual figures and this does actually affect the balance on the bank account (despite a fixed starting balance being set).
I'm not sure if I'm entering these values correctly?
James, Ed - how did you get your balance sheet issue sorted in the end?
Thanks! -
Hi Ed,
I know how my own NBV is calculated, but I don't know how to feed this information into FAC.
If I make an entry just before the start date for FAC I end up messing up my bank balance figure as well as incurring an additional 25% depreciation charge on the balance sheet. I just need to effect the starting NBV. Any ideas?
EMPLOYEE
