Create a single nominal account

Find this screen

Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Enter New Account.

Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Amend Account Details.

How to

Create a new nominal account

Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Enter New Account.

Use this when you need to create a few individual accounts.

Tip: If you want to create nominal accounts for the same code, but for different cost centre and department combinations, the Generate Accounts screen is much quicker.

Every nominal account must have a Code, Report Category and Account Type before it can be saved. You can also add budgets, analysis codes, memos and attachments on the relevant tabs.

  • Code - Up to 8 characters which can be numbers or letters. Each nominal account is allocated a unique reference.

  • Report category - determines whether balance of the account is included on the Profit and Loss or Balance Sheet. It also groups your nominal account balances on your financial statements.

  • Cost centre / Dept - these are used to divide your accounts so you can produce separate financial statements for different parts of your business.

    You must have set up your cost centres and departments first.

  • Account Type - choose from the following account types:

    • Posting - transactions are only posted to these accounts.
    • Memo - used for additional analysis. Transactions posted to memo accounts are not included in financial statements or subject to double-entry rules.
    • Group - used for budgeting and reporting.

Amend a nominal account

Once a nominal account has been saved, you can't change the Code, Cost Centre, or Dept.

If you've created an account with wrong Code, CC or Dept and haven't entered any transactions, then delete the account and recreate it.

You can change the remaining information but this may have other implications.

Be careful when changing the report category as this will affect where the balance of this account is included on your profit and Loss or Balance sheet.

Hide or show a nominal account

You might hide a nominal account when you're no longer using the account, or have created a new account that you don't want to be used yet.

This removes the nominal account from lists and helps prevent the account being selected by mistake.

Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Amend Account Details.

  • To hide the nominal account, set the Active Status to Hidden.

  • To show a hidden nominal account, set the Active Status to Active.

Note: If you cannot change the Active Status, you must first enable the setting Restrict account selection to existing and active accounts in Nominal Ledger Settings. See Restrict account selection to existing and active accounts.

See About hiding nominal accounts.

Delete a nominal account

If you no longer want to use a nominal account, you can delete it in the following circumstances:

  • The account has a balance of zero.
  • The account has no transactions posted to it either in the current or archived file or held in the waiting postings file.
  • The account is not set as the Suspense account.
  • The account Code has not been used as the default on a Project Item.

Useful info

Allow or prevent journal entries

You can choose whether or not nominal journals can be entered for this nominal account. This is only applicable to Posting and Memo accounts.

Journals are usually used for transactions that can't be entered using other Sage 200 processes or for making corrections when transactions have been posted to the wrong nominal account.

You may want to restrict the entry of nominal journals for some accounts, particularly when transactions are posted to an account automatically as part of a Sage 200 process, such as the Debtors Control account or Accumulated Profit account.

To prevent nominal journals being entered, make sure Allow manual journal entries is not selected.

Allow or prevent batch postings

Whether to choose to us batch postings depends on whether you're using waiting postings Transactions that have not yet been posted to the Nominal Ledger. These can be updated by using the Nominal Ledger Update Waiting Postings routine. to update your nominal accounts or not. This is set by the Update the Nominal Ledger immediately journal entries are posted option in the Nominal Ledger Settings.

  • If you've chosen to not to select Update the Nominal Ledger immediately journal entries are posted and to use waiting postings, then you can also choose to Use batch postings here.

    If this is selected, transactions being posted to the same nominal accounts are posted as a single value, when Update waiting postings is run. When checking your nominal accounts, you won't be able to see a full history of individual transactions.

    For example, if you post a group of five invoices and then choose to update your waiting postings, a single transaction will be posted to your Debtors Control account for the value of all five invoices.

  • If you've chosen to select Update the Nominal Ledger immediately journal entries are posted, then individual transactions are always posted to your nominal accounts straight away. Don't select Use batch postings here.

Changing this setting affects postings that are already in the waiting postings file as well as subsequent postings.

Show your account balances in lists

Here you can choose whether or not to show the balance of this nominal account on the nominal list and workspaces.

You might want to do this for sensitive accounts where you don't want all your staff to see the account balance. Your retained profit or salary accounts for example.

Keep transactions

You can remove older data, which makes it easier to find relevant information, frees up disk space and optimises the system processing speed.

  • Keep transactions for - Enter the number of months (up to 36) you want to store transactions on this nominal account. After this time the transactions are archived or can be deleted.

    The default for this is set in the Nominal Ledger settings.

    This account must be a memorandum or posting account.

    Changing this setting affects transactions the next time a period is closed.

Link to a parent company (consolidated account)

You'll only see the Consolidated Account setting if a parent company has been set for this subsidiary company. This allows you to consolidate the balance of your nominal accounts from several subsidiary companies into a single holding parent company, so that you can produce financial reports for the holding company.

Select the Consolidated Account - Code of the parent company nominal account that this account in the subsidiary company should be linked to. The Code list shows the nominal accounts from the parent company.

If you see a yellow highlight, it means that the account entered doesn't exist in the parent.

If the account isn't linked, then the balance will post to the suspense account in the parent company, when you run the consolidation.

When consolidation takes place, the values in a subsidiary account are posted to the linked parent company ledger account.

To do this the Nominal Ledger and Chart of Accounts for the parent company must be set up correctly for Sage 200.

If the subsidiary nominal accounts do not have a consolidated account code assigned to them, the consolidated values will be posted to the Suspense account, in the parent company ledger.

There are different ways to link nominal accounts from the subsidiary company to the parent company:

  • Select the linked consolidated account for individual nominal accounts, as you create or amend your accounts.
  • Use Amend Report and Consolidation Setting after you have created the nominal accounts, to quickly change category or nominal account codes.
  • Apply default nominal accounts (in Nominal Ledger Settings), after you have created the nominal accounts.

Adding analysis codes

Analysis codes can be used as custom fields or extra pieces of information that you can use to improve your reporting and to compare different areas of your business. An analysis code has two parts:

  • Name or field label
  • Value. These values can be entered as text or you can a create a predefined set of values. You then choose the values for each code to apply per nominal account.

You create the analysis codes and their associated values on the Maintain Analysis Codes screen.

Here you choose the value to associate with each code. If you don't want to link a particular analysis code to this account, then just leave the value blank.

About entering budgets

You can record budgets against your nominal accounts, for the current year and up to five future years.

Note: You must enter budgets as a negative amount for all accounts where you're expecting the account balance to be a Credit. This normally applies to all Income type accounts on the Profit and Loss and Liability accounts on the Balance Sheet.

Tip: If you want to set an overall budget for a group of nominal accounts, see Budget owners and combined nominal budgets.

  1. Choose Monthly Budget from the Budget type list.

  2. Enter an amount for each month in the Budget (this) year column.

    Tip: Enter budgets for credit accounts as a negative value.

  3. The total annual budget is calculated and displayed in the Annual Budget field.

  4. You can also enter an Original Budget figure for the budget this year, if you want to keep a record of the initial budget amount so that you can compare it against any changes to the budget.

Use this to specify a single annual budget amount and divide it equally across your accounting periods. Any odd amounts that are left over are added to the last period's budget.

  1. Choose Annual Budget from the Budget type list.

  2. Enter the Annual Budget amount.

    Tip: Enter budgets for credit accounts as a negative value.

  3. The budget for each period is calculated and displayed in the Budget (this) year column.

    • If you change the Annual Budget amount for the budget this year, the Original budget column will keep a record of the initial budget figure for each period. You can change this if you want to.

Setting a group budget indicates that you do not intend to enter any budget figures for this account, since they will be included in the budget figures for a group account.

These are useful if you need to weight certain periods more than others to account for seasonal or market trends.

Profiled budgets can only be used for your current year.

  1. Set up your budget profiles from the Nominal Ledger settings. Here you specify the percentage of the budget that is to be applied to each period.
  2. Choose Profiled Budget from the Budget type list.
  3. Select the relevant profile from the Budget profile list.

  4. Enter the Annual Budget amount.

    Tip: Enter budgets for credit accounts as a negative value.

  5. The budget for each period is calculated and displayed in the Budget (this) year column.

    • If you change the Annual Budget amount for the budget this year, the Original budget column will keep a record of the initial budget figure for each period. You can change this if you want to.

See Set up nominal budgets.

Memos

Memos allow to add comment and notes about a nominal account. For example, you might want to add notes about the kind of transactions that should be posted to the account, note when an account should not be used.

You can mark these memos as Active, so you can see which are still being used. Setting a memo as Inactive allows you to keep a record of previous memos. The Last Updated date shows the time and date amendments were made.

You can print the list of memos or send them to an Excel spreadsheet.

  1. Right-click the memo in the Memos tab.
  2. Choose Print or Export as appropriate.

Attachments

Use this to include files and documents about the nominal account to their record in Sage 200. You can store the file with the record, or include links to files that are kept on a local or network drive.

  • If the attachment is a file, a copy of the file is stored with the account/record on the server.
  • If the attachment is a link or a folder, only the location of the file or folder is stored; e.g. it might be a file or folder on your network.

The file is tested by antivirus software before it is attached.

  • .quarantine - waiting to be tested by antivirus software.
  • .blocked - found to be potentially unsafe. The file has been deleted and a dummy file with the .blocked extension is listed so you can see that there's a problem.

Tip: You can drag-and-drop files from Windows Explorer to add files to the attachments list.

More about account types

Posting accounts are the only account type that accounting transactions are applied to. These accounts are reflected in the Trial Balance and include accounts used in your Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet financial statements.

These accounts are provided for additional analysis. Memorandum accounts act in the same way as posting accounts except that postings to them are deemed to be outside any double-entry bookkeeping.

Whenever you are posting transactions to the Nominal Ledger using the journal entry facilities, the total of all postings in the batch needs to balance to ensure accurate double-entry bookkeeping. However, any value associated with a memorandum account does not affect either the debit or credit total of the journal. This enables you to analyse values in more than one way without affecting the balance of accounts or the ledger as a whole. Memorandum accounts are used to enter supplementary information relating to account activities. These accounts are not included in the totals for financial statements by default. They may also be included in the account analysis reports.

Note: You must still enter a minimum of two items in a journal, even when using memorandum accounts.

Memorandum accounts must have their own unique category code, this category code must not be associated with any posting account types. Balances on memorandum accounts can be included in your financial statements if required, by amending the filter in Report Designer. However, they should be positioned independently in the main body of either the Profit and Loss or Balance Sheet (normally at the end of the layouts).

Group accounts are used for reporting purposes only. You can associate budgets to these accounts for budget comparison reporting, but you cannot make postings to them.

For budgetary control purposes, the nominal account number is used to associate group accounts and posting accounts. Group accounts can be a parent (higher in the hierarchy) and/or a child (lower in the hierarchy) of other group accounts.

When planning your nominal accounts structure you must consider the way the nominal account number is associated with other accounts, particularly if you intend to use budget reporting. Your Chart of Accounts must conform to the same pattern for group budgeting. We recommend you have a Chart of Accounts in one of the following arrangements:

  • With cost centres.
  • With cost centres and departments.
  • Without cost centres (and therefore no departments).

If you intend to use cost centres we strongly recommend using cost centres on all nominal accounts; not a mixture of cost centres for some accounts and not for others.

Example

This example illustrates group budgeting using a Chart of Accounts without cost centres or departments. The accounts are associated with the first account through the account reference 08. Account 09310 is not included.

Account number Account type

08

Group

081

Group

08101

Posting

08102

Posting

08103

Posting

08104

Posting

09310

Posting

About hiding nominal accounts

You might hide a nominal account when you're no longer using the account, or have created a new account that you don't want to be used yet.

This removes the nominal account from lists and helps prevent the account being selected by mistake.

You can check which nominal accounts are hidden and who changed their status, by using the Accounts not Active report.

You can hide an account at any time, even if the account is in use, so it's best to use this carefully.

Transactions that are already linked to the nominal account can still be processed and posted to the nominal account.

If the account has been hidden by mistake, just amend the account and set the Active Status to Active.

  • To see a list of hidden accounts and who changed their status, use the Accounts Not Active report (Nominal Ledger > Reports > Account Analysis).
  • You can see the details of any hidden accounts on the Nominal Account Enquiry. Hidden accounts are included on the look up list here.
  • Hidden accounts are displayed by default in the List Of Accounts report (Nominal Ledger > Reports > Account Analysis). To show either active or hidden accounts in the report, use the Active status criteria.

This is shown on the Accounts Not Active report (Nominal Ledger > Reports > Account Analysis).

If you cannot change the Active Status for an account, you must first enable the setting Restrict account selection to existing and active accounts in Nominal Ledger Settings. See Restrict account selection to existing and active accounts.

Questions

Error - The nominal account cannot be deleted as it is used within the Project Accounting module

This occurs if the nominal account Code is set a the default account on a Project Item in Project Accounting.

You can't delete any nominal accounts with this Code regardless of any Code, CC / Dept combination. This is because only the nominal account Code is set as a default on the project item, as any CC / Dept combination is worked out when a project transaction is posted.

See also

Create nominal accounts for a new cost centre or department

Generate nominal accounts for existing cost centres and depts

Import and export nominal account information

Reference

Report category codes

Example of the Chart of accounts

Consolidate nominal ledgers

Using cost centres and departments with nominal accounts

More about Group account budgets

Design layouts for Financial Statements (Report Designer)