There are many differences between the 2014 version of Sage 50 and previous incarnations of the Sage/ Simply Accounting software. This month, we’re going to highlight one of the changes that have been requested multiple times in the years I have been providing support for Sage products.

This question is rarely asked before late November, and gets far more common as the year winds down.

In previous versions of Sage, when the person doing payroll needed to create paycheques dated into the next calendar year, they would create a copy of the current company, advance the session date on that copy, and generate the following year cheques on that copy. Then they would keep a separate record of those transactions, and manually re-enter them into the real company file after the beginning of the year. That got me tired just writing it!

In the 2014 version of sage 50, along with the other enhancements that were included, users now have the ability to create a paycheque into the next calendar year without going through all that. Just open the paycheque module as usual, then change the transaction date inside the paycheque to a date in 2014. There are a few advantages to doing it this way. First, you don’t need to write the post-dated cheque on a scrap of paper and keep it safe. Second, you don’t need to worry about losing said scrap of paper. Third, after you create the cheque dated 2014, and close that module, your system will still have a 2013 session date, and you will be able to continue working right away.

Bear in mind that this works for paycheques, but does not work for PAYMENT cheques. Stay tuned.