Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Foolish Assumptions 2
Icons Used in This Book 2
Beyond the Book 3
Where to Go from Here 3
Part 1: Getting Started with Sage 50 Accounts 5
Chapter 1: Introducing Sage 50 Accounts 7
Looking at the Varieties of Sage 7
Installing the Software 9
Getting what you need before you get started 9
Moving to the installation 10
Setting Up with the Active Setup Wizard 10
Registering Your Software 16
Finding Out How Easy Sage Is to Use 17
Navigating around Sage 17
Exploring the Menu bar 18
Using Wizards 24
Chapter 2: Creating Your Chart of Accounts and Assigning Nominal Codes 25
Understanding as Much as You Need to about Accounting 26
Dabbling in double-entry bookkeeping 26
Naming your nominals 27
Preparing reports 27
Looking at the Structure of Your COA 28
Checking out the default COA 29
Identifying balance sheet codes 31
Looking at profit and loss codes 33
Leaving gaps and mirroring codes 36
Accommodating floating nominals 36
Editing Your COA 37
Amending your COA 37
Creating a new COA 39
Checking Your COA 42
Previewing errors 42
Looking at some common errors 43
Chapter 3: Setting Up Records 45
Choosing How to Create Your Records 45
Getting a quick start using the New icon 46
Following the wizards brick by brick 46
Creating Customer and Supplier Records 46
Setting customer and supplier defaults 49
Deleting customer and supplier records 51
Having a change of view 51
Creating Your Nominal Records 52
Exploring your nominal records 52
Renaming existing nominal records 54
Adding a new nominal record 54
Looking for a nominal record 55
Looking around a nominal record 57
Deleting a nominal code 58
Recording Your Bank Accounts 59
Renaming an existing account 60
Creating a new account 60
Deleting a bank record 62
Getting Your Product Records in Order 62
Creating a product record 63
Editing a product record 65
Deleting a product record 66
Entering a project record 66
Setting Up Fixed Asset Records 68
Chapter 4: Recording Your Opening Balances 71
Timing Your Switch to Sage 72
Obtaining Your Opening Balances 72
Entering Opening Balances Using the Wizard 74
Entering your default date 75
Entering customer and supplier balances 76
Checking the customer and supplier opening balances 77
Reversing the nominal balances in preparation for entering the trial balance 77
Entering the trial balance from your accountant 78
Entering the uncleared transactions for your bank account 80
Checking opening balances against the trial balance from your accountant 81
Checking your data 81
Backing up your data 81
Manually Entering Information 82
Manually recording opening balances 82
Manually recording opening bank balances 83
Manually recording nominal opening balances 84
Putting in opening balances for products 85
Checking Your Opening Balances 87
Printing an opening trial balance 87
Dealing with errors 87
Part 2: Looking into Day-to-Day Functions 89
Chapter 5: Processing Your Customer Paperwork 91
Posting Batch Entry Invoices 91
Creating Credit Notes 94
Registering Payments from Your Customers 96
Giving credit where due - allocating credit notes 99
Recording payments on account 101
Deleting Invoices and Credit Notes 102
Chapter 6: Invoicing Your Customers 103
Deciding on an Invoice Type 104
