Bookkeeping Software. User Guide. for Village Halls and Small Charities. Published by The Village Hall Doctor

Transcription

1 Bookkeeping Software for Village Halls and Small Charities User Guide Published by The Village Hall Doctor First edition May 2013

2 Table of Contents Introduction to Ace Money Bookkeeping Software 3 What Ace Money will do, what it won t do and why it s ideal for small charities. About Ace Money Bookkeeping Software... 5 Terminology and what to do before downloading the software programme. Examples of Categories and Sub-Categories Downloading Ace Money Software Setting up your Ace Money File Creating your file, changing settings and then saving and backing up files. Creating Accounts and Setting up Payees Setting up Categories and Sub-Categories Setting up Budgets Simple budgets and monthly budgets. Setting up Repeat Transactions (Scheduled Transactions) Direct debit payments, repeated receipts and transfers between accounts. Recording New Transactions Receipts, payments and transfers between accounts. Bank Reconciliation Creating Reports Monthly Spendings by Categories - a Report for the General Committee Printing Reports within Ace Money Exporting Reports to Excel Other Reports for the Finance Sub Committee Monthly Spendings by Sub-Categories and Budget by Categories/Sub-Categories. Year End Account What the Charity Commission requires. Closing Year End Accounts Clearing the old financial year ready for the next. Sharing data between computers

3 Monthly Spendings by Categories - a Report for the General Committee Monthly Spendings by Categories 1. From the Reports drop down list, select Category reports then Monthly spendings by categories. 2. Click the date range button at the top of the LH menu panel. You can now choose from a long list of Predefined periods - weeks, months, quarters, years or all to date. Which one you select will depend on how far you have progressed through you financial year. There s no point in selecting a whole year s figures until you have reached the year end - otherwise you ll have columns of zeros. 3. Alternatively, you can select any period by clicking Custom dates and then using the drop down monthly calendars. 4. In this example we will select Custom dates and then the 6 months from 1 st October 2011 to 31 st March To include ALL Categories even if they have zero amounts in some months), click Select categories towards the top of the LH menu panel and then Select All. SEE HOT TIP OPPOSITE. 6. By default the categories are arranged alphabetically. We recommend you put them in numerical order by clicking the Code button at the top of the code column. This gives the following. 7. Receipts (income) are shown in green and payments (expenditure) in red with a minus sign. 8. The monthly cash flow (receipts less payments) are shown in black at the bottom of each month. 9. Total year to date (YTD) figures for each category are in the far right column. 10. The monthly average for each category is shown in the last but one column. Date range button Click here to arrange categories in numerical order COULD THAT BE SIMPLER??? You now have two options for printing reports within Ace Money or transferring to Excel. The procedures described below will apply to any report.

4 Note Page Hot Tip: Include all the zero amounts We recommend you include zero figures for both Categories and Sub-Categories in your monthly reports - particulary when you are producing actual versus budget reports. If you have set up a template in Excel (see page 35), with a column for all the budget figures, then you need to make sure that the input data matches row for row with the budget column. To include ALL Categories even if they have zero amounts in some months), click Select categories towards the top of the LH menu panel and then Select All. Don t Panic!! Over the next few pages about reports, you ll notice that the months and years used switch about a bit. Don t worry about this! They are purely examples, taken from various time slots, to explain the various steps in creating reports at different stages of a financial year. All the figures are ficticious.

5 Closing Year End Accounts Once you have set up your file in Ace Money it can roll on from year to year continuously. Using the Custom dates option in the Reports menu you can select any time period you wish. But we recommend you have a clean break at the end of each financial year so that you can use the quicker Predefined periods option to extract data. To close the year end account, follow this procedure. 1. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACK UP OF THE CURRENT YEAR S FILE!! 2. Select the current year file BUT DON T OPEN IT. 3. Go to File and then Save As. 4. In the File name box change from the current year say XVH to the next year XVH and then Save the new file. 5. Go back to File and the file XVH will be at the top of the list of files below on the LH panel. Select it. 6. N.B. The transactions shown are still those the old year Select the first account (at the top) and then select Account properties in the bottom half of the buttons in the LH menu panel. 8. Change the account Name to XVH and the Opening balance figure to the closing balance of the old year ( ). Click Okay. 9. Repeat with the other account(s). When you click on Accounts the new year appears. 10. We now have to clear the new account year of all the transactions created in the previous year, but retain all the Categories, Sub-Categories, Budgets and Payees details. 11. Select each Account in turn (all the transactions will appear on the screen), select all (Ctrl A, or Edit/Select All). 12. Go to Edit and Delete to remove all the previous year s transactions. 13. Revise all the Budget figures as necessary, by following the instructions on pages 17 & Off you go again for this new year!