When you use the FILE SALES TAX feature of QuickBooks and your from and to dates don’t coincide with your actual filing dates, you haven’t indicated the correct date range. It’s fairly simple to manually change the date range for the period that you’re filing, but you can set this up so that the correct date range automatically shows up each time you open the FILE SALES TAX window. Here’s how to set the default date range in the Canadian version of QuickBooks:
Go to the VENDOR CENTRE and double click the vendor RECEIVER GENERAL. Then click on the TAX AGENCY INFO tab. Choose your Reporting Period (Monthly, Bimonthly, Quarterly, Bi-annual, or Annual). Then choose the Period Ending. Once this is set, it will show up automatically when you go to FILE SALES TAX.
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I have checked the setup of my Vendor account for Receiver General, and it shows properly an annual filing. But when I imported my old company file (QB2005) into the new QB 2015 it appears to have inserted several automatic transactions with the Memo description like “(Should have filed) Tax on Purchases:2013-xx-xx – 2013-xx-xx” and there are several of these that appear to be quarterly filing adjustments, which I would not have made since I file annually. The result is that I cannot process sales tax reports as there appears to be an error in the outstanding amount. Up until 2012 I processed my sales tax manually with general journal entries and I am trying to correct the file to get through several years of unposted work. This seems to be the first hurdle to get over. Can I just delete those automatic entries?
When trying to jump from 2005 to 2015, you’re covering a lot of territory, which can cause problems with the data. It’s a common practice to do the import in smaller jumps, maybe 2-3 years at a time. No matter how it’s done, it’s important to compare your financial reports from the old file to the new file so you can verify that the jump was clean. I’m not sure why those ‘automatic transactions’ were added, possibly because of changes in the sales tax module over the years. But that’s just a guess. Before deleting anything, you must verify the jump by comparing reports from the old file to the new file as I said. Then, if the numbers are out, and you want to play around with deleting the automatic entries, make a backup first, and then compare your financial reports again. That’s the only way you’ll know if the data came over properly.
No, sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear on the transition. From 2002 to 2013, I had been using QB2005 and all the transactions were posted up to the end of 2013. In April 2014, QB decided not to support the 2005 version anymore and so I decided to try to use another accounting software for a year or two. I wasn’t happy with it and so by 2016 decided to go back to QB, picking up the file from the last transactions in the old QB in 2013, with a plan to re-post and finalize the 2013 tax year and then post 2014-2016. Before I could close out 2013, I tried to run a tax report and noticed that it was saying there were unresolved transactions – that’s when I looked into the general ledger account to see what has been going on. When I review the ledger, I see that the system automatically calculated and posted quarterly transactions right back to the start of my file in 2002. I had been manually doing HST reporting and remittance up to 2013, so now have all these strange entries in there that I guess need to be reversed. I am concerned about what happens if I delete all these transactions, as well as how the system will treat the manual journal entries I made over the years.
I have checked the balance sheet and starting values of all my accounts and the right values are in the 2013 starting and ending reports from the dates I imported the file. The only account that might be out of whack is the Receiver General A/P account with these automated entries. As you suggest, I think I will just go ahead and backup my file now and then go and delete over 40 automated transactions in the system – what is weird about them is that they don’t have any net affect on the ledger account as they show equal debits and credits to the GST/HST Payable account. Weird – but I will keep plugging and see how this works out, I guess.
While they won’t affect the GST/HST Payable account, they WILL affect the File Sales Tax module. To check, look at one of the automatic entries. If there’s information in the ‘Tax Item’ column, deleting these entries will definitely change things when you go to file.
Hmmm – not sure what that means – in terms of the effect on the “module”. But I see what the effect is – I backed up then deleted all those transactions. Now I am showing that I owe $18,700 in GST if I was to file today, but with $18,000 in unassigned sales tax amounts. The $700 difference makes sense, but I still don’t know how to fix this. I guess I will go back and restore from the backed-up file and then see if I can resolve the $80.00 or so that was out in the first place. Maybe will try to get some support from QB directly on this file.