Generally if the balances on your last day of your last fiscal year for Retained Earnings plus the Current Earnings for that year don't match the opening balance of Retained Earnings for this year and there are no General Ledger entries to your Retained Earnings account, then likely it is an aberration of the year end transition, not something you did.

Also check your Data Integrity from the Maintenance menu and your trial balance.  If the Trial Balance balances last year but not this year and your Data Integrity Check shows Debits not equal to Credits, then you should be able to get Sage to do a Rebuild by phone and it will rebalance the account.

By definition Retained Earnings includes all previous year's income statements net profit balances and any journal entries that have been posted directly to the account.

Is there any way I can see what's been going on in the retained earnings ? Is there a way I can get into the account somehow to see what's posted there ? When I try to, it doesn't show any entries in the transactions by account. Is there a back way ? The difference is significant.  

Sorry, with the program itself, that report is the only way to see what entries are in an account.  You didn't indicate the results of the tests I suggested but if they are out of balance then likely the solution is as I have posted.

One other thing I sometimes do is if the Trial Balance balances on the last day of the previous fiscal year but not on the first day of this year, then I run the Trial balance on the first day of the year, then double-click each account to see if the balance on the Transactions by Account report are the same as the balances on the Trial Balance.  However, the math of the difference between the Debits and Credits on the Trial balance and Data Integrity should be the same as your imbalance in the Retained Earnings.

The trial balance is in balance. Thank you for all your help. I guess a rebuild may be in the cards.

Just to be clear, I said if your Trial balance IS NOT in balance, you may need the rebuild.

If it is in balance, then some other account is out as well and you have to do the tests I suggested.

I will try them again.