Trial Balance and Balance Sheet Out of Balance

[AndyMarrs]

While doing the month end, I found that both the Trial Balance and the Balance Sheet were out of balance by the same amount. To trace the problem, I calculated the out of balance amount and made a report to show the folio number of any transactions of that amount in the month concerned. This showed that the offending item was an update from the payroll. The heading updated didn't exist although the balance heading (9221) did, so the transaction amount was only applied to 9221, which caused the out of balance condition. Solution: edit the heading in the HeadingTrans file to an existing heading and run Check and Fix Files.

This is the second time this has happened. OK, I've been using ABC since 1988 and we run a weekly payroll so it's not very common, but it might help someone. This can't happen when ordinarily entering transactions in ABC6, because the program will not allow not existant headings.

[abctech]

Thanks for that. In earlier versions of ABC the Accounts and Payroll were part of the same program. In ABC6 they are completely separate programs, and users who only have the Payroll can quite legitimately use ANY Analysis Heading codes to split the payroll into cost centres or departments.

The problem you describe happens if those Headings are transferred into the ABC6 Accounts package (where they do not exist).

What we should do is at least give you a warning at the time of updating the accounts so you can choose to either change the heading code used in the Payroll, or to go and create that Heading in the Accounts. It's on the list of things to do.