Mastering Sage 50 v. 2014 Training Tutorial

When you want to create a new company file in Sage 50, you use the “New Company” wizard to create your new company file and enter its information. You can start the “New Company” wizard by selecting “File| New Company…” from the Menu Bar. The “New Company” wizard displays different windows into which you will input your company’s information. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Before entering new customers into your company file, you should ensure that you have the “Customer Defaults” set as desired to prevent having to enter repetitive data values into each new customer record you create. You can access the default customer settings in the “Customer Defaults” window by selecting “Maintain| Default Information| Customers…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Before entering new vendors into your company file, you should ensure that you have the “Vendor Defaults” set as desired to prevent having to enter repetitive data values into each new vendor record. You can access this information by selecting “Maintain| Default Information| Vendors…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Setting the “Inventory Defaults” allows you to specify the default settings used when you create new items that will be used in your invoices, bills, and purchase orders. You can access this information by selecting “Maintain| Default Information| Inventory Items…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

To set up payroll and employee defaults, select “Maintain| Payroll| Payroll Setup Wizard…” from the Menu Bar. You must set up your payroll item defaults before you can set up your employee defaults. Sage 50 understands this, and even if you selected “Maintain| Default Information| Employees…” from the Menu Bar to set up your employee defaults first, it would instead launch the “Payroll Setup Wizard” to make you set up your payroll items first. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can make changes to many payroll item fields directly within the “Employee Defaults” window. You can select “Maintain| Default Information| Employees…” to view the information in the “Employee Defaults” window after you have completed the “Payroll Setup Wizard” in Sage 50. Learn this and more during this lecture.

If you work on specific jobs for customers and need to track amounts spent and earned by job, you may want to set up your “Job Defaults.” You can access these by choosing “Maintain| Default Information| Jobs…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You must backup your Sage 50 company data to prevent having to re-enter many hours of data in the event of data file loss or corruption of the company data file. Even minor events like a power outage can damage a company data file, so it is recommended that you back up your data frequently. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Restoring a company file replaces all information in a selected company file with information saved to a backup file which you choose. This is a critical feature that you must learn to perform in the case of company data file corruption or loss. You can choose to restore the company data only, the customized forms only, the web transactions only, or all three things at once. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can create additional user accounts that can access your Sage 50 file. You can also restrict the areas and procedures that these additional users can perform within the company file in order to secure the data within the company file. Note that before you can create multiple user accounts, however, you must first create an “Administrator” account that has access to all of the features within the company file. This user account can then create the other user accounts, which can have restricted access to the company file, if needed. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The General Ledger records all financial information for your company. Every transaction that occurs is eventually posted to the set of accounts that make up the General Ledger. This set of accounts is called the Chart of Accounts. Here we will look at setting the defaults for the General Ledger. Learn this and more during this lecture.

If you selected to create your chart of accounts using one of the business types listed in the “New Company Setup Wizard,” then you likely have a full chart of accounts which will give you all of the accounts necessary to run a business. However, you may want to add, delete, or rename specific accounts in the default chart of accounts. You will also need to enter “opening balances” for your accounts, as well. This can be done using the “Maintain Chart of Accounts” window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

As long as there are no transactions in an account and it is not set as a default account for any items, vendors or customers you can delete it from the Chart of Accounts. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Sage 50 can record account beginning balances in any period for companies that have no posted transactions. After one or more transactions have been posted, Sage 50 records beginning balances as prior period adjustments instead. To enter beginning balances for accounts, click the “Account Beginning Balances” button. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can post transactions to the General Journal to record transactions that are not recorded by other journals. You can also use it to enter and edit account reconciliation adjustments. You enter both debits and credits in the “General Journal Entry” window to post a balanced transaction. You must perform “double-entry” and ensure that the credit and debit amounts are equal for the entire entry before you can post the transaction. This then affects the account balances in the General Ledger. Learn this and more during this lecture.

General Ledger Reports show the detail of transactions recorded by various journals by account number. To view the basic General Ledger reports, you select “Reports & Forms| General Ledger…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can create budgets for both of the two open fiscal years, and also for the two years immediately prior to and following the two open fiscal years. In Sage 50 Complete Accounting, however, you may only have one budget per company file. You can either allocate individual amounts per account, or allocate a single amount to be distributed equally per period throughout the fiscal year. Learn this and more during this lecture.

In Sage 50 you have access to a cash account register that allows you to enter transactions which affect cash accounts into a checkbook-like format, if you prefer. You can view the register by selecting “Tasks| Account Register…” from the Menu Bar. Here you can use the “Cash Account:” drop-down to select which cash account to use. Then use the “Show transactions for:” drop-down to select a date range for which you would like to see the transactions in the register. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Setting up sales tax is a two-part process. First, you have to set up the sales tax authorities that you will use. Second, you must create the sales tax codes using the sales tax authorities. Sales Tax Authorities are the tax rates for individual governmental agencies. A sales tax code is a group of one or more sales tax authorities. When you create the invoices, the sales tax code is what is used to calculate the sales tax. You can see how much sales tax has been collected per authority in the “Taxable/Exempt Sales” report. Learn this and more during this lecture.

When you fill out an invoice for a customer, you simply need to record the tax code for that customer in the invoice. You also need to make sure that you have marked all of your taxable items as being taxable in the “Maintain Items” window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

When it comes time to write the checks to the vendors for the sales taxes that you owe, you will need to find out how much you must pay to each one. You can do this by pulling up the “Taxable/Exempt Sales” report. You can access this report by selecting “Reports & Forms | Accounts Receivable…” from the Menu Bar. This will bring up the “Select a Report or Form” window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Your company’s “Accounts Receivable” account monitors the amounts of goods and services sold to customers. When a transaction is posted to Accounts Receivable, Sage 50 first updates the associated journal and then posts the amounts to the General Ledger. The first part of working with the company’s Accounts Receivables was done when the “Customer Defaults” were created after the initial creation of the company file. Within the customer defaults, you set the standard customer terms, invoice aging, and more. Once that is done, you can then turn to adding customers to your customer list. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The customer’s “Beginning Balances” are the invoices that were outstanding as of the start date for your company file. The total balance of the “Accounts Receivable” account in the General Ledger should equal the total amount of all customer beginning balances- as long as no other transactions have been made within the company file. Learn this and more during this lecture.

When you add new vendors, they will have their default information set to match the settings specified by your “Vendor Defaults.” You can change this information, if necessary. Then all you will have to enter is information that is unique to each vendor. You add new vendors through the “Maintain Vendors” window in Sage 50. You can access this window by selecting “Maintain| Vendors…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The “Beginning Balances” are the vendor bills that were outstanding as of the start date that you entered for the company file when it was created. The balance of the Accounts Payable account in the general ledger should equal the total amount of all vendor beginning balances- as long as no other transactions have been made. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Sage 50’s inventory features track the goods and services that your company purchases and sells to others. As you make inventory-related transactions, Sage 50 posts the information to the General Ledger and adjusts the quantities and costs of goods accordingly. Learn this and more during this lecture.

When you are ready to enter the beginning balances for your inventory items into Sage 50, you will need to open the “Maintain Inventory Items” window, and click the “Beginning Balances:” arrow on the “General” tab to open the “Inventory Beginning Balances” window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can modify the record IDs assigned to records within the “Maintain” windows within Sage 50. To change a record’s ID assignment open the corresponding “Maintain” window for the selected record type. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You should set the default settings used for your customer statements and invoices by choosing “Maintain| Default Information| Statement/Invoices…” from the Menu Bar to open the “Statement/Invoices Defaults” window where you can change these settings before sending customer invoices and statements. In this window, there are two tabs: “Statement Print Options” and “Dunning Messages.” Learn this and more during this lecture.

When you have a customer request for pricing for a prospective job, you can create a quote. In the quote, you can enter pricing information about your goods and services for the customer’s request. Since they haven’t agreed to purchase anything yet, they are only provided with a quote. Quotes do not affect the General Ledger. They also are very useful, as quotes that the customer accepts can easily be converted into sales orders or sales invoices later. You can enter a quote for a customer in the “Quotes” window by selecting “Tasks| Quotes/Sales Orders| Quotes…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

To create a quote, select “Tasks| Quotes/Sales Orders| Quotes…” from the Menu Bar to open up the “Quotes” window where you can create a quote to send to a customer that requests one. Learn this and more during this lecture.

After creating a quote you can convert it into a sales order or a sales invoice in the future if the customer accepts the quote. To do this, first open the “Quotes” window by selecting “Tasks| Quotes/Sales Orders| Quotes…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The “Sales Orders” window is used to enter amounts of goods or services that the customer agrees to buy, but which are not shipped and invoiced immediately. Remember, entering sales orders does not impact the amounts in the “accounts receivable” general ledger account. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The “Sales/Invoicing” window is used to create customer invoices for items which you have shipped or services you have provided. Remember that invoices do impact the amount in “accounts receivable.” Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can issue credit memos to your customers for returned merchandise, discounts, and other types of credits. To issue a credit memo to one of your customers, you use the “Credit Memos” window. You can access this window by selecting “Tasks| Credit Memos…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The “Receive Money” window, formerly called the “Receipts” window, is used to enter cash sales and deposits without invoices. It is also used to apply payments to customer invoices. When you select a “Customer ID” in the "Receive Money" window, all unpaid invoices for the chosen customer appear. You can enter payments for the entire amount due, or partial payments. You can also apply credit memos and prepayments to invoices in this window as well. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You may want to assess finance charges on accounts with overdue balances. To apply finance charges, select “Tasks| Finance Charge…” from the Menu Bar. This will bring up the “Calculate Finance Charges” window to select the customer or range of customers for whom the finance charges should be calculated. You should also enter the date the finance charges will be applied. If you only want to charge finance charges to a single customer, select them from the “Starting Customer:” drop-down box and then click the “Starting Customer Only” button. If you specify more than a single customer, then click the “OK” button when you are done. Learn this and more during this lecture.

If you elected to use the “Select for Deposit” window to assign “Deposit Ticket ID” values, then in the “Select for Deposit” screen you can combine the amounts of the various customer receipts which you have received into a single deposit amount with a single deposit ticket ID. This can greatly reduce the stress of reconciling your bank statement with the multiple receipt amounts individually posted in Sage 50. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The “Purchase Orders” window is shown below. Use this form to order inventory items from vendors.You can then receive the items as they are shipped in the “Purchases/Receive Inventory” window. Purchase orders can be edited by adding or removing line items and do not actually affect the amount in the “accounts payable” account until you receive the items ordered. You open this window by selecting “Tasks| Purchase Orders…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

In a drop shipment, your vendor ships the items directly to your customer. You still “receive” the bill, but simply indicate that this is a drop-shipment. You can click the “Drop ship” checkbox in the upper right corner of the purchase order. Note that doing that makes the “Customer ID:” field appears at the top of the purchase order form. Learn this and more during this lecture.

While the “Purchase Orders” task window is geared to creating vendor orders one at a time, the “Select for Purchase Orders” window allows you to order inventory from multiple vendors at the same time. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The “Purchases/Receive Inventory” window is used to enter purchases from vendors and also enter inventory received from purchase orders you have placed. Just as in the “Sales/Invoicing” screen, you have two tabs into which you can input information: the “Apply to Purchase Order No.” tab and the “Apply to Purchases” tab. To access the “Purchases/Receive Inventory” window, select “Tasks| Purchases/Receive Inventory…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

The “Payments” window is used to select and pay individual vendors. To access the “Payments” window, you select “Tasks| Payments…” from the Menu Bar. You can use this window to enter purchases which have been made from vendors that do not have an associated bill or you can use it to apply payments to vendor bills entered through the “Purchases/Receive Inventory” screen. When a “Vendor ID” is selected in the “Payments” window, all unpaid bills associated with that vendor appear on the “Apply to Invoices” tab. For unpaid vendor bills, you can choose to pay the entire amount of the vendor bill or make a partial payment. You can also apply prepayments and vendor credit memos in this window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

After you have entered purchases through the “Purchases/Receive Inventory” window, you can select “Tasks| Select for Payment| Paper Checks…” from the Menu Bar to use the “Select for Payment” window to pay multiple vendor bills. When you select this option, the “Select for Payment- Filter Selection” window appears first. You can use this window to select the invoice and vendor filter criteria used to select invoices to pay. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You use the “Vendor Credit Memo” window to enter credits that you receive from vendors for broken merchandise, vendor discounts, and other types of vendor credits you are given. To do this, select “Tasks| Vendor Credit Memos…” from the Menu Bar. This will bring up the “Vendor Credit Memo” window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

After you enter assembly items into your inventory and have created the bill of materials for them, you can then use the “Build/Unbuild Assemblies” window to build or unbuild the assembly items. When you build an assembly, the quantities of the component items are decreased and the quantity on hand of the assembly item is increased. When you unbuild an assembly, the opposite occurs. Once you unbuild an assembly, you can then sell the individual components. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Sometimes, you have to make inventory adjustments so that the amount shown in Sage 50 agrees with your physical count. To enter an inventory adjustment, select “Tasks| Inventory Adjustments…” from the Menu Bar. You can increase or decrease inventory using this same window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

If you are using Sage 50 Complete or Premium Accounting, you can re-calculate item prices for a range of selected items at once. To do this, select “Maintain| Item Prices…” from the Menu Bar. In the “Maintain Item Prices – Filter Selection” screen that appears, set the desired filters to select the items or range of items for which you want to adjust the prices. Once you have used the drop-downs available to choose for which range of items you wish to adjust pricing, click “OK” to continue to the “Maintain Item Prices” window. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Before you can issue a paycheck to an employee, you must have the employee entered into Sage 50. We looked at the process of setting up payroll and entering the employee defaults back in Chapter 2. Now, we will look at creating the individual employee records. To do this, select “Maintain| Employees/Sales Reps…” from the Menu Bar. This invokes the “Maintain Employees/Sales Reps” window where you can add new employees and edit employee information. Learn this and more during this lecture.

If you enter your employee’s beginning balances as of the start date of your company file, you will ensure that your payroll reports and W-2’s print with the correct figures. You can enter a beginning balance for each employee that you had when you started entering information into Sage 50 and edit it at any time. These amounts don’t affect the General Ledger, but do affect the year-to-date totals for each payroll field. Therefore, you should enter the beginning balances before posting paychecks. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Note that after you have created an employee record, you can return to the “Pay Info” tab within the “Maintain Employees & Sales Reps” window to enter information regarding job performance evaluations. To do this, click the “Performance Reviews” button shown below the pay list on the “Pay Info” tab. Learn this and more during this lecture.

Use the “Select for Payroll Entry” window to issue paychecks to multiple employees at once. You can use the filter selection window to select which employees to pay. To print paychecks for a group of employees, select “Tasks| Select for Payroll Entry” from the Menu Bar. This will launch the “Select Employees- Filter Selection” window. Here you select what types of employees to pay. This includes selecting specified employees with the same pay frequency and pay types who should be paid on the same day. Learn this and more during this lecture.

When you want to issue a single paycheck to a single employee, you can enter it into the “Payroll Entry” window. You can also use it to enter handwritten payroll checks. To open this window, select “Tasks| Payroll Entry…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can use the “Write Checks” window to quickly write checks and then apply the amount to one or more expense accounts. If the payment that you are making doesn’t involve invoices or inventory items, then this is simply the easiest payment method to use. You can access this window by selecting “Tasks| Write Checks…” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can easily void checks in Sage 50. When you void a check, a new transaction is created with a check number consisting of the original check number, followed by the letter “V.” This new entry will reverse the entries made to the General Ledger by the original check. Both will still appear in reports and the “Account Reconciliation” window when you reconcile your accounts. Learn this and more during this lecture.

You can reconcile any account in Sage 50 using the “Account Reconciliation” window. Most often, users will reconcile bank accounts, cash accounts, and credit card accounts. When you reconcile an account, you ensure that your company’s financial information about the account matches the information from the account’s associated financial institution. Once you receive a bank statement for an account from a financial institution, you should reconcile the transactions displayed within the statement to your transactions within your Sage 50 company file. This can help you detect bank errors, data entry errors, and fraud much more quickly. Learn this and more during this lecture.

When you have entered all of the transactions for the current accounting period, you can advance to the next accounting period. The “Change Accounting Period” window is used to switch between accounting periods within the two open fiscal years. To display this window, select “Tasks| System| Change Accounting Period” from the Menu Bar. Learn this and more during this lecture.