Sage 50 comes standard with an income statement that has 12 monthly columns. But recently I had a request for a 12 month balance sheet. When building this report I realized what a great example it is of how Sage 50’s financial statement designer is powerful, flexible, and easy to use.
At first this report seems like it will be rather time consuming to build. But when you realize you can take building blocks from existing financial statements and modify them to fit your needs, the 12 period balance sheet becomes very easy.
- Start by going to the Reports & Forms menu and choose Financial Statements. In the list of financial statements select <Standard> Income – 12 Period and click the Design button at the top of the window.
- Near the left edge of the Design window there will be a column of grey buttons. These are the components that define this report. Right-click on the Column Desc button and choose Copy.
- Close the Design window. If prompted, don’t save your changes.
- Back at the list of financial statements, select the balance sheet format you want to use as your starting point for the new report and click the Design button.
- In the Design window, right-click on the Column Desc button and choose Paste. You will see the column descriptions from the 12 period income statement appear above the original balance sheet column descriptions.
- Right-click the new Column Desc and choose Properties. The Column Description window will open showing a table. Each row in the table defines a column on the report. Column 1 is the account descriptions, so that will remain unchanged. For columns 2 through 13 (periods 1-12) change the “Contents” from Activity to Balance (the easiest way is to click in that field and type the letter B). When you’re done, click OK to save your changes.
- Now right click on the original Column Desc and choose Delete.
- Click the Save button and give your report a new name.
That’s all it takes to create a 12 period balance sheet. But remember that, just like the 12 period income statement, for this report to work correctly, the date range must be set FROM December 1st TO December 31st or (whatever your last period is if you are not on a calendar year). This is because the report works by defining the date range for the last column and each previous column counts back one more month/period from that date range.
