Nominal Ledger settings

Find this screen

Open: Settings > Cash Book / Nominal Ledger > Nominal Ledger Settings

How to

Turn on cheque printing by default

When you enter a nominal payment, you can choose to print a cheque for each payment, when it's saved.

If you always want to print a cheque, you can choose to make this option selected by default on the Nominal Payment screens.

Go to the Options tab.
Click Edit.
Select Print cheques with nominal payments to set this.

Restrict account selection to existing and active accounts

You can control how nominal accounts can be selected in Sage 200.

Go to the Options tab.
Click Edit.
Use Restrict account selection to existing and active accounts to control how you can select accounts.

If you choose to restrict account selection, you will only be able to select nominal accounts that have a valid nominal account code, cost centre, and department. You will not be able to enter invalid or blank nominal codes. This means that wherever you can select a nominal account list, you must select an account before you can continue.

This setting is not enabled by default.

Note: This setting must be enabled if you want to hide nominal accounts (by setting their Active Status to Hidden).

Note: This changes the way in which you select nominal accounts. See I have difficulty selecting nominal accounts.
If you choose not to restrict account selection, you will be able to enter invalid or blank nominal account codes (this is only allowed in some screens).

Note: You cannot disable this setting if you have already set any nominal accounts to be Hidden. You can find which nominal accounts are hidden by using the Accounts Not Active report. To stop a nominal account from being hidden, change its Active Status to Active. See Hide or show a nominal account.

Note: This setting only applies to the Sage 200 desktop app. In the Web Portal app, you can only select nominal accounts that have a valid nominal account code, cost centre, and department.

Set budget profiles

These are useful if you need to weight certain periods more than others to account for seasonal or market trends. These are useful if you have higher or lower expenditure at certain periods of the year, such as during the school holidays or at the start of the school year.

You choose a percentage to apply to each period. The total of all the periods must add up to 100. For each profile, enter a percentage for each period.

When you enter the budget for a nominal account, choose the profile and enter an annual total. The budget per period is set using the percentages entered on the profile.

Note: You can only use profiles for current year budgets.

To use budget profiles:

Go to the Budget Profiles tab.
On the required nominal account (Budget This Year tab), choose Profiled Budget as the Budget Type.
Choose the profile you want to use; 1, 2 or 3.
Enter the Annual budget amount.

The annual budget is divided up using the percentages set on the budget profiles.

Set up online VAT submissions

If you want to submit your VAT Return directly to the HMRC or Revenue Commissioners from Sage 200:

Go to the VAT Submissions tab.
Enable VAT submissions:
- To make VAT submissions to the HMRC gateway for Making Tax Digital, select Enable VAT submissions as digital record as part of Making Tax Digital.
  
  Note - warning
  Making Tax Digital will become mandatory for all VAT registered businesses from April 2022. XML VAT submissions will no longer be accepted. If you previously used the XML VAT submission feature, you can either move over to MTD for VAT, or opt to use the HMRC portal to submit VAT returns manually.
- To make VAT submissions to the Irish Revenue, select Enable online VAT submissions.
Enter your VAT Contact Details. You must enter a valid email address or the submission will fail.

Set up online VAT payments (HMRC only)

In the UK, if you have submitted your VAT Return online, you must also pay your VAT online. You can do this directly from Sage 200 using either:

The Sage e-Banking service.
A Supplier Payments account.
The HMRC website.

Set up consolidation

Use consolidation if this is a subsidiary companyschool and you want to consolidate the trial balance into a parent companyreporting company.

Go to the Consolidations tab.

Note: You'll only see the Consolidations tab if you've set a parent on the Company Management screen.
Click Edit.
Select Enable consolidation to turn consolidation on for this companyschool.

For more information, see Set up consolidation.

Useful info

Nominal account budgets

A budget can be assigned to any nominal account. Use the budget to track your projected expenditure against your actual expenditure. The results can be displayed or printed using various budget reports.

Budget amounts can be both positive and negative. Negative budgets apply to accounts whose balances are normally a credit, such as your sales nominal accounts.

When you create a nominal account, you choose the type of budget you want to use.

No budget

No budget figures can be entered on the account. The account will not appear in any comparison with budget reports.
Annual budget

You have one amount that represents the total budget for the year. This amount is then automatically divided across your accounting periods. Any odd pennies are added to the last period's budget figures.
Monthly budget

You enter a separate budget amount for each of your accounting periods. You can also leave out months if required.

For accounts that have occasional monthly irregularities, you may find it convenient to enter an annual budget and then change the individual monthly figures.
Profiled budget

You enter a single annual budget amount that is divided according to the percentage for each period set on the budget profile. Choose one of three possible budget profiles that you have entered in the Nominal Ledger Settings.

UK Online VAT submissions

The VAT Return is submitted from Sage 200 to the HMRC via the HMRC gateway for Making Tax Digital. You must enter your HMRC user ID and password when you submit the return.

To make VAT submissions to the HMRC gateway for Making Tax Digital, select Enable VAT submissions as digital record as part of Making Tax Digital.

To submit the VAT Return to HMRC from Sage 200, you must make sure that:

You've entered the UK VAT registration number for your company, in Company Details.
You've set your Country code to GB - Great Britain, in Company Details.
Your base currency is set to Pound Sterling, in Currencies and Exchange Rates.

Once you've checked your VAT Return and made any necessary adjustments, you create the final VAT Return. You then enter your HMRC user ID and password and follow the steps in the Sage Internet Submissions wizard to submit the VAT Return.

Irish Online VAT submissions

A VAT 3 file is created by Sage 200. This file is saved to your PC and you submit it to the Irish Revenue via your ROS (Revenue On-line Service) account.

To make VAT submissions to the Irish Revenue, select Enable online VAT submissions.

To create a VAT 3 file, you must also make sure that:

You've entered your ROS registration number for your company.
You've set your country code to IE.
You've set your base currency to Euro.

When you create your VAT Return, you choose where you want to save the file on your PC. You then send it to the Irish Revenue using your ROS account.

If you need to, you can make manual adjustments to the values on the return before submitting it.

About consolidated reporting

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

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.

Using the 'Set consolidated accounts' option

This is a quick way to link your nominal accounts to the parent companyreporting company. As this makes your consolidated account links identical to the nominal account in the subsidiary, you need to carefully consider when to use it.

Your parent companyreporting company must have exactly the same nominal account structure, (Code, CC and Dept), as in the subsidiary companyschool.
If any of the linked accounts don't exist in your parent companyreporting company, then the balance is posted to the suspense account.

You can also link your nominal accounts using:

Amend Report and Consolidation Settings.
Amend Nominal Account.

Fix it

The Consolidations tab is missing

You'll only see this once you've set a parent on the Company Management screen. You'll need to log out of Sage 200 and log back in before the tab is displayed.

What happens when

Online VAT submissions is set up (UK only)

When you Produce your VAT Return, you're automatically taken to the online submissions wizard where you send your VAT Return directly to the HMRC.

Consolidation is turned on

Extra columns are added to the Amend Report categories and Consolidations Settings screen.
The Consolidated Account is enabled on the Create New Nominal Account and Amend Account Details screens.
You can access the Consolidations screen.

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