Merging customers from the Maintenance menu would have been the ideal solution and would have prevented the need to record the historical payments.

To delete the customer, you need to clear the paid historical transactions.  So Backup your file, then open Receipts and pick the customer you wish to delete.  If any invoices show up, you will not be able to delete the customer.  You need to make sure they are paid.  You said this was done but I always check anyway.

Then go to Maintenance, Clear Data, Clear Paid Transactions, Clear Paid Customer Transactions.

Pick the customer, pick a date and hit Ok.

Then you should be able to delete the customer. 

Richard,

I did this and it cleared it out of the customers transactions.

However, I just realized that it did not clear the payment journal entry out of the bank account/AR  account, so now I am showing double payment of these transactions.

I thought I could just reverse the journal entry, but it will not allow me to use my AR account in a journal entry. How do I get rid of the double entry?

Thanks,

Amy

Sorry but you gave me incorrect information in your first message.  You said

Amy Gray said:

So, I wanted to delete the transactions and delete the second customer account. I reversed all the invoices by putting in payments, but I am unable to delete the customer.

Sorry, you should have said that you reversed all the entries by putting in payments as a real entry in a date period that is not historical, and not as an historical entry.  You were discussing that you entered the historical invoices and then mentioned "reversing" them.  Since you never posted a journal entry to create the historical entries, you would have reversed them using the Payments button on the Historical Transactions tab of the customer ledger which basically reverses them.  Posting a journal entry to "reverse" an entry is not a reversal if you do not reverse the debits and credits on the original entry.  Because there are no debits and credits on the original entry, your entries are not reversals...and so I gave you incomplete advice.

To correct this now I need some help with some questions

1) Is your file still in History mode?

2) What does your data integrity check indicate about the Accounts Receivable?  Maintenance, Check Data Integrity

3) Have you done your first bank rec yet?

4) How did you get a double payment?  One customer, one invoice paid through Receipts should give you only one entry.

1.Yes.

2.Says customer historical is not balanced

3. No

4. I have been trying to get AR straightened out with historical transactions and new transactions.  When I was working with the customer setup guide, I kept coming up with my AR incorrect by this invoice amount, so I deleted the payment and put it back in. I obviously duplicated something in the process.

So, if I delete the payments in the current period and put them in as historical payments, do you think it will fix the problem?

Amy Gray said:

So, if I delete the payments in the current period and put them in as historical payments, do you think it will fix the problem?

I don't think so.  You cannot delete the entry at this point because there is no customer.  Without a customer, I do not think it will allow you to lookup the entry and reverse it.  You can try.

You mentioned you deleted the original payment, then put it back in again and now you have two payments.  But don't you also have an entry on the Withdrawals side of the bank rec to offset the original one?  If not, then please make sure you turn off the "Do not show corrections" checkmark so you can see all entries and look again.

Doing something that affects the bank, then reversing it and doing it again is duplicating the work on the deposit side of the bank rec, but you should have the reversal entry on the Withdrawals side as well to offset the first one.

I'm not sure if we are going to be able to figure this out without me seeing your file, but the fact that you are in historical mode still helps.  The fact that you are trying to do calculations with current transactions and historical transactions doesn't help.

So let's go back to basics.  To set up a file, you need a balance set of books as of some specific date.  Let's say you decided to start your new Sage 50 file on Aug 1.  That means you stopped using your old bookkeeping system on Jul 31.  The balanced set of books you need are reports from your old system.  The basic reports I want to concentrate on right now are the Balance Sheet and Income Statement (or Trial Balance if you used it) and the Accounts Receivable detail list of what customers owe you for each invoice not paid by Jul 31.

Normally I will use the Setup Guide for Accounts and enter the closing balances from Jul 31 into the Sage 50 file.  These are your Opening Balances for Sage 50.  Then I double check and correct any account balances that I messed up on.  Of course I never do that but I check anyway. :)

Then I will start adding customers and add their outstanding invoices.  The balanced books would not be balanced if the total of the unpaid customer invoices did not match what you put in the Accounts Receivable balance when you entered the amounts for the Balance Sheet.  So when you enter all the customer invoices not paid by Jul 31, the balances should match.  You use the Customer Aged Detail report under Reports, Receivables, Customer Aged (the first one) in detail mode to check to see if you entered each invoice correctly.  Only run this report to Jul 31.

Then check the Data Integrity as indicated in my previous message to make sure it all balances with the Balance Sheet.

Now, after some time, it appears that this is not balancing anymore.

So to check your historical entries, you need to look at the totals for all your accounts receivable (Reports, Receivables, Customer Aged (the first one) in detail mode) against what you put in as the Opening Balance of your Accounts Receivable Account to see if they are still the same and to see if they are still what you put in to begin with.  To check the balance you put into Accounts Receivable in the historical setup of Opening Balances, open the Chart of Accounts from the Company page and double-click the Accounts Receivable account.  There is an Opening Balance box showing on that dialog.  It should match the original number you put in from your original Balance Sheet from your old system.  If you did not post any entries to the first day of using Sage 50 (in my example that is Aug 1), then you can run the Balance Sheet as of Aug 1 to see all your Opening Balances to match with your reports from your previous system.

If the numbers don't match now, you need to fix them...and check the data integrity again.  By fixing it, I don't mean just posting things willy-nilly.  There should be not posting of entries to create debits and credits.  Only use the Historical functions of Sage 50.  Go back to your reports and make sure the real entries are listed and the real balances from your original Balance Sheet/Income Statement are correct on all accounts, not just Accounts Receivable.  If Accounts Receivable's Opening Balance is incorrect, so is another account and it might be the bank or Retained Earnings, etc.

Now I assume the duplicate entry you see in the bank rec will be a debit to the bank and credit to the Accounts Receivable account.  Please make sure there is not offsetting entry on the other side (Withdrawals), probably on the same date.  If there is, then is there really a duplicate?  You can double-click the numbers in the Bank Rec module to see the original entry and then you can use the Report menu to see the full journal entry.

I'm going to leave it there at this point because that is a lot of double-checking you need to do and it's late on Friday afternoon.  Once you have an idea of whether your starting point is wrong or not, then let me know what you found.  I'm not in the office much next week but will try to respond when I can.