Discrepancy between the Balance Sheet/Trial Balance and an Aging Report

There are several reasons for discrepancies between the Balance Sheet or Trial balance and the Aged Report for a prior period. The options below will assist in troubleshooting the discrepancy in Sage 50 Accounting.

There are several reasons you have a discrepancy:

• The Aged Report doesn't have all customers/vendors selected
• The Aged Report has a filter removing some unpaid invoices from the report
• You've stored Prepayments in a different linked account than the AP/AR account
• The data integrity is out
• The data has cleared paid invoices 
• The data needs a rebuild done to retabulate the values

Verify you’re looking at the same data

1. In the Customer or Vendor Aged report window, click Modify, Report Options.
2. Select Default Report Options.
3. Click Include inactive customers.
4. Click Select All twice to ensure you've selected all customers/vendors.
5. Click OK.
6. Stop here if the numbers are now equal.

Check that the data integrity is OK

1. From the home window, click Maintenance, Check Data Integrity.
2. If the Integrity Summary reports that Data OK but the AR/AP differs from the Unpaid Invoices, there are future transactions.
3. If Data inconsistencies have been detected and the AR/AP don't match unpaid invoices, the ledger balance initially differs from the respective module balance.
4. If it says "Data OK" and everything is equal, then proceed to step 3.

Check to see if you've accounted for Prepayments(AP) or Deposits (AR)

1. Go to Setup, Settings, Receivables or Payables, Linked Accounts.
2. If it's AP, does the Prepayments linked account different than the AP account? If no, go to the next section.
3. If it's AR, does the Deposits linked account different than the AR account? If no, go to the next section.
4. Subtract the value of the prepayments or deposits account from the balance in the AP/AR account. Does it match the Aged Report? If yes, there’s no discrepancy. If no, go to the next section.

There’s an issue in the Data

1. Has anyone cleared paid transactions from the data or cleared inventory lookup data to delete an inventory item?
   • If yes, there's no way to get the two reports to match because they’re generated by looking at different data in the database
2. The Aged Report finds unpaid invoices by date, and clearing paid transactions removes them from the report. The Balance Sheet and Trial Balance use journal entries, which remain even after clearing paid invoices.
   • If you haven't cleared any data, contact Sage Support at 1-888-522-2722 to check for possible errors