My General Ledger Does Not Match My Trial Balance!
Several Sage 100 clients have called me recently at month-end wondering why their Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable Trial Balance Reports don’t match the General Ledger accounts.
The General Ledger total amounts were lower than the Trial Balance reports, which implied something from the sub-ledger was not posted to the General Ledger.
After further analysis, I found that several Daily Transaction Registers (DTRs) had not yet been posted / updated to the General Ledger. When the Daily Transaction Register was printed from the General Ledger/Main menu, it was determined that many Daily Transaction Registers from several sub-ledgers with different dates had not yet been posted!
The problem is a combination of using Batches for data entry, and the Sage 100 Paperless Office Module creating Journal and Register PDFs.
Prior to Sage 100 version 4.20, if a data entry register was updated, but the Daily Transaction Register (DTR) was not updated, subsequent printing of the Daily Transaction Register printed both the current DTR and any un-posted DTRs. (This feature allowed some clients to post all the Daily Transaction Registers at the end of the day, or end of the week).
With the addition of Paperless Office, the behavior changed, so that when the register is printed, only the Daily Transaction Register associated with the posted batch is printed as a PDF, leaving any un-posted Daily Transaction Registers “hidden”. “Out of sight, out of mind”, the DTRs were never posted to the General Ledger.
One reason the Daily Transaction Registers may not have been posted is that the user printing the sub-ledger register (i.e. Cash Receipts Register) may have a ROLE which does not allow them to update the Daily Transaction Register. Another reason is that the user did print the Daily Transaction Register and then selected ‘No’ to update.
Several procedures can be implemented to resolve this issue:
- Always print AND update the Daily Transaction Register every time a Register or Journal is updated.
- Verify Roles to verify whether the User has the ability to update the DTR when the data entry register or journal is updated.
- Print the Daily Transaction Register from the Module’s Main Menu. In each module or sub-ledger (i.e. Accounts Payable), on the Main Menu there is an option to print the Daily Transaction Register, which will print ALL un-posted Daily Transaction Registers. Therefore, on regular basis (daily, weekly) you can print the Daily Transaction Register from the Module’s Main Menu to ensure all DTRs have been posted.
- The Daily Transaction Register can also be printed and updated for ALL modules or sub-ledgers from the General Ledger Main Menu. The Daily Transaction Register is the last menu item. This procedure will catch all un-posted DTRs regardless which module it is created from.
- To ensure all Daily Transaction Registers from all modules have been posted to the General Ledger, I recommend adding “Printing the Daily Transaction Register from the General Ledger Main Menu” to your Month End Closing Procedure List.
Verifying all Daily Transaction Registers have been posted to the General Ledger prior to Month-End will assist in matching the General Ledger to your Trial Balance reports.
Written by Kenneth Phillips, Enhancement Support Specialist
