Balance Sheet error

[Robert Walraven]

A client sent me some V8 company data with a strange problem. If the balance sheet is printed for the last financial month of the last year, the report balances fine. However, if the month is changed to the first month of the current financial year, the balance sheet is out of balance with the retained earnings being way off.

I have examined the data carefully with PawCom and found that no errors when scanning the data and that the general ledger transactions in jrnlrow.dat all add to zero for every period. I've also examined the jrnlrow.dat data carefully and don't see anything unusual. This tells me that the data is actually ok and the problem seems to be related to how peachtree computes retained earnings.

What seems to be happening is that Peachtree does not actually store the retained earnings data (except for beginning balances) in the registry but computes the quantity based on the month you run the report.

Has anyone else seen a problem anything like this? If so, were you able to correct the problem?

[bluegal]

I encountered a slightly similar problem in A/P. I finished December 2001 transactions, printed A/P aging reports and GL reports. However, in going over the year-end figures with my accountant in January, the A/P GL account balance for December no longer matched the A/P aging report balance for December.

We tracked down the difference in the balance to a batch of checks I had paid in January, but had posted as "Payments" in error with a December date. I had edited them to a January date before I printed them. However, the payments remained on the December A/P aging report, while the GL entries were recorded correctly in January. The problem took care of itself once we got past the end of January.

I'm not sure if this scenario would happen if some adjustments were made in December or January that affected retained earnings, but since that account is unique in the way it's treated once you get past year-end maybe there is a glitch somewhere....

[MedProd]

This same problem just jumped up this month on my 9.0.02 (PT 2002). October is my first month; period 13 in PT. My September T/B and Bal Sheet are fine, October is out of balance by $586,815.81. Trial balance doesn't balance, balance sheet doesn't balance, and the problem is in the retained earnings account.

Robert W.: Did you ever find a solution for this?

[MedProd]

Problem Fixed!! The answer was in the PT Passport area. For more info check Answer ID 357, but I'll give the basics below.

If bal. in retained earnings is incorrect after close; and if G/L report does not give you a "General Ledger does not foot in Period ##" error; then (in single user mode) Go to the Start/Run menu of Windows. Type in "C:\PEACHW\PEACHW.EXE -i". Click OK. Open your company. Print your company G/L for future reference. Select File/Integrity Check. Make a backup as requested. Place a check mark next to "G/L Balances" and click OK.

That's all there is to it. It finished in less than 1 second. And I was in balance again. The birds were singing. The sun was shining. Etc, etc.

[Robert Walraven]

I had already tried the repair procedure described in Answer ID 357 and that didn't fix this customer's data. Still looking for a solution.