Changing the report category or consolidated account

Find this screen

Open: Settings > Cash Book / Nominal Ledger > Amend Report Categories and Consolidation Settings.

How to

Sort and filter the list of nominal accounts

Filter the list to make it easier to find the nominal account you're looking for:

Choose Code, Cost Centre or Report Category.
Enter the required range.
Click Display.

Change the report category

The report category determines whether balance of the account is for income and expenses (Profit and Loss) or for the Balance Sheet. It also groups your nominal account balances on your financial statements. For maintained schools, report categories are used to represent your CFR codes.

Be careful when changing this, as it'll affect your financial reports and could result in figures being reported incorrectly.

To change thus, just click into the Category column and select the new one from the drop-down list.

Link to the consolidated account

The consolidation account is used to link an account in the subsidiary companyschool to a parent companyreporting company. When you consolidate, the account balances are posted to the account specified here.

Click into the Cons. Code column.
Select the account from the drop-down list. This is a list of list of nominal accounts from your parent companyreporting company.
Click Save.

We recommend that you always use the drop-down list to select an a nominal account, as the list shows all the nominal accounts from your parent companyreporting company. If you enter an account here that isn't in your parent, then the balance is posted to the suspense account when you run the consolidation.

Useful info

About changing report categories on nominal accounts

Use this when you want to change the report category assigned to a range of nominal accounts. If you only want to change the category on a single account, you can do this here or on the Amend Account Details screen.

Remember when you change the report category for an account it may change how that account is reported on your financial statements. We recommend that you check that both your Balance Sheet and P & L are correct once you complete this task.

Importing report categories

If you have imported a range of report categories, this is a god way to quickly assign them to your nominal accounts.

If you have a large number of report categories to add to the predefined set of report categories provided by Sage 200, you can import these into Sage 200 from a CSV file.

Each imported category must:

Not exist in Sage 200 already.
Have a Description.

Have one of the following Report Type and Category Types.

Report Type	Category Type	Description
BS	Asset or Liability	Used for Balance Sheet accounts
PL	Income or Expense	Used for Profit and Loss accounts

Report Type	Category Type	Description
BS	Asset or Liability	Used for balance sheet and control accounts Nominal accounts that Sage 200 automatically posts transactions to, such as the Debtors Control, VAT, Creditors Control..
PL	Income or Expense	Use for on your Income and Expenditure accounts
SOFA	Income, Expense or Asset	Used on the SOFA report

About consolidation

You can use the consolidation option in Sage 200 to produce management reports if your organisation is made up of several subsidiary companies.

If you're a multi academy trust, you can use consolidation in Sage 200 to create a single SOFA report that includes the required financial information for all the schools within the trust.

How it works

The consolidation is run from each subsidiary companyschool.
Each nominal account (Code, CC and Dept) in the subsidiary companyschool is linked to a nominal account in the parent companyreporting company.
The balance of all nominal accounts, at the end of a selected period, is transferred from each subsidiary to the parent companyreporting company. This is posted as a single consolidation transaction in the parent companyreporting company.
The balance of each nominal account in the subsidiary is posted to the linked nominal account in the parent companyreporting company.
The value of the consolidation transaction is the difference between the actual trial balance in the subsidiary, at the end of the selected period, and the trial balance the last time the consolidation was run.

About linking your nominal accounts to a parent company

It's important to have your subsidiary nominal accounts linked correctly, because if the same nominal account doesn't exist in the parent, the transaction will be posted to the suspense account.

The key to successfully consolidating your subsidiary companiesschools is to make sure all your nominal accounts are linked correctly.

The parent companyreporting company and each subsidiary companyschool has their own chart of accounts. To transfer the values from the subsidiary to the parent companyreporting company, you must link the nominal accounts in the subsidiary companyschool to the related nominal accounts in the parent companyreporting company.

The easiest way to do this is to make sure all your subsidiaries and you parent company have the same chart of accounts.

This means all each subsidiary and parent will need to have the same:

Report categories	Must	This makes sure your balances are reported on the same sections on financial statements such as the CFR balances report, P & L and Balance Sheet.
Code (for nominal account)	Recommended	This makes it easier for you link your accounts. You may have some subsidiary companiesschools with unique nominal accounts. In this case, make sure you link to a nominal account in the parent that has the same cost centre (fund) and report category. This will make sure that the value is posted correctly on your P & L and Balance SheetCFR Balances report, P & L, Balance Sheet, and SOFA report.
Cost centre	Must	This makes sure balances are reported for the correct cost centrefund type - essential for your SOFA report. The majority of your income and expense nominal accounts will have a cost centre (fund) associated with them. This cost centre will also have a fund type. If each subsidiary nominal account with a cost centre is linked to one with the same cost centre in the parent, then this will ensure that your cost centre balancesfunds are reported correctly. The easiest way to do this is use the same cost centres across all your subsidiary companiesschools.
Department	Recommended	You can use the Dept section of the nominal account to report income and expenditure by department within each companyschool. If you use departments, then the departments for your subsidiary companiesschools may be different, for example a primary school may have different departments to a secondary. To resolve this, you will first need to check all the departments used in your subsidiary companiesschools. Then in your parent companyreporting company, you should create all the departments used in all the subsidiary companiesschools, and their associated nominal accounts.

Fix it

Can't see the consolidation columns?

These columns are only displayed if:

This is a subsidiary company and you've set a parent company from the Company Management.
You've turned consolidation on from the Nominal Ledger settings.

What happens when

Report categories are reassigned?

The selected nominal accounts are updated with the new report category.

To reflect these changes in your financial statements, make sure you Update your reports before viewing them.