Good evening everyone.

I'm currently studying for my AAT level 2, specifically the Using Accounting Software module, where I am using Sage Business cloud for my practice and booked assessment. Unfortunately there is a particularly annoying issue I seem to be having with all of the practice papers, which is making me worried for my actual exam. This is specifically regarding the 'Accounts Start Date' field.

Here is part of the setup for a particular practice paper I have:

Set up the business name, address, owner and accounting period.

If required by your software, please add the VAT number and rate.

Set the system software date as 30 June of the current year.

Set the financial year to start on 1 June of the current year.

Based on these instructions, I currently have it setup so that the 'year end date' is 31/05/2023 and the 'Accounts Start Date' is 30/06/2022

The initial few questions then task you with setting up opening balances as at June 1st of the current year (since this is the only month the exam questions take place within). This all works okay and I have no problem here. The problem arises when you are asked to log batch sales and purchases invoices, mainly because the dates on these are throughout the month of June. When I try save these invoices, I get the following error (You cannot record entries prior to your Accounts Start Date of 30/06/2022)

I'm unfortunately at a bit of a loss here. I can't set the Account Start date to June 1st, because the opening balances of the nominal ledgers all have to be prior to the Accounts start date, so there's just no way I can reasonably see of getting around this issue.

I know the Cloud Accounting software differs from other accounting packages, but does anybody have any advice around this very specific problem and any potential ways around it?