Issue/Symptom/Question

When I run the Comparative Balance Sheet financial statement, the amounts in the Last Year column are different than the same period last year's GL balance.

Applies To

Finance & Accounting > Setup > Financial Statement Formats / Format #5
Comparative Balance Sheet
System Management > Balancing > Initiate General Ledger Balancing Routine

Resolution/Fix/Answer

The 'Last Year' column of the Financial Statement Format 5 Comparative BS is pulled from the Budget/History entry table, not the actual GL account - so it can be adjusted to bring the Last Year amount to equal the ledger balance from last year.

If there are discrepancies, you can create positive or negative manual adjusting entries to the Budget/History screen to equal the ledger balance.

• Access the Budget/History screen (Finance & Accounting/Data Entry/Budget/History Information/Budget/History Entry)
• Query the history records (type H), the OU and Fiscal Year of the Last Year account in question
• Go to Account # and scroll down to (or query) the GL Account to review
• Check the Fiscal period in question
• If adjustment is needed, 
  • click on the Adjustments box  and 
  • enter the Period #, (1)
  • enter the Adjustment # (if this is your first adjustment, enter 1), (1)
  • enter the positive or negative amount needed to bring the Current period amount to equal the ledger balance for that period. ($-4000.00)

NOTE:  Balance Sheet accounts should adjust the actual period of the statement: if the statement is run as of April 30, and an adjustment is needed, you would adjust period 4 (of a calendar fiscal) to affect this specific report.
Income Statement accounts can be adjusted for any period prior and up to the report date period, since this is an accumulated total.  

(Note:  The 'This Year' column balances are taken from the actual General Ledger balances in PENTA.)

(Note 2:  This Budget table is automatically updated with actual ledger balances when a financial close, and/or a Fiscal Year End close process is run and will have a type of "H" assigned - you can still make adjustments, whether these entries are made manually or automatically)

(NOTE 3:  Before you begin to make adjusting entries to the History records for each account in the Budget screen, you should run the Balancing Report for the General Ledger in order to identify any Budget/History vs Account Balance amounts for each OU/Account.)

Cause 

The reason PENTA uses the last years' amounts from the Budget/History table for this financial report format type, is to allow new PENTA Customers to manually enter historical account balances to be used for comparative BS reporting, when the account balances have not yet been automatically posted to PENTA's database during a close process.

If a history entry is made by mistake,  possibly when the intent was to change a budget amount, the balances will look different from one year to the next due to the different source of the data.