Year One - prepayments and accruals

As covered elsewhere (e.g. accruals, accrued income and prepayments) Silverfin has templates for accruals and prepayments that can automatically calculate and create a suitable adjustment journal, taking into account the opening balance. The templates should be automatically selected in any nominal ledger reconciliation for these accounts, but can also be accessed through the Edit button at the top right of any nominal reconciliation and selecting (as appropriate) accruals, accrued income, prepayments, etc. 

To generate the required adjustments, you need to provide sufficient information for Silverfin for both the current and previous period and this is therefore slightly more complex in year one. If you are working in Silverfin for the first time for that client, before entering any further data in the current period for accruals/prepayments you should first select the prior period in the relevant nominal reconciliation - click on the down arrow by the date at the top centre of the screen:

and select the relevant prior period. Then complete the details, including matching the accrual/prepayment to the relevant nominal profit and loss code through the # key (again covered here for accruals, accrued income and prepayments). Ensure that the totals here equal the nominal ledger balance.

You should then go into the current period and before entering data, go to the bottom of the reconciliation and select "Copy below template data above" from the Actions menu next to the Comparative Reconciliation title - this will over write any data you have entered into the reconciliation so copy the template data first.

You should then use this starting point to enter the correct data for the current period for accruals or prepayments. Once you are happy that the data for the current and previous period are correct in the template (and each one is matched to the correct profit and loss nominal code though the # function), you will need to enter an adjustment to get to the reconciled status. You can do this by selecting Show journal entry box as below.

This will then generate an adjustment for you with the required amounts calculated for the movement needed. You then need to select Post Adjustment, which will take you to the normal new adjustment screen. You then should only need to enter the description (don't forget this otherwise the adjustment will not post) and click on Add. 

This full procedure obviously only applies for the first year and in future, this template function makes processing accruals and prepayments much easier.