If your account went through a migration and your accounts are no longer reconciled I understand the frustration around this. My apologies. You are able to make year end adjustment entries to start a new reconciliation period if you know that your previous year history was reconciled correctly.
In the previous version of Wave, you had to go to the existing chart of accounts (CoA), choose Add an Account, and choose an existing pre-made account. If you couldn't find exactly what you were looking for, you were able to re-name any existing account. As a result, some users would be forced to choose something that closely matched what they desired, but wasn't the exact account type, or you could choose a random account and simply rename it.
In order to migrate users, we mapped the accounts in the previous version to the corresponding account and sub-type in the new version of Wave. There was no way for the system to interpret a custom-named account and map it to the new version. So, re-named accounts ended up migrating over as what they were originally intended for in the old account. This is likely what caused discrepancies in your reconciliation
My apologies about this. I understand that it has likely affected your bookkeeping, however, you are able to fix this with a bit of work.
I want to have 2 businesses and a personal summary . I am sick of journal entries from my drawings to make a balance sheet. And creating entries if there are transfers from bank account on another profile. Why can't this all be done in one place. Where can I close off the previous year and start at zero. Do I have to do 200 journal entries to start the year. I can not do a date range on my equity accounts. Example financial year for me is July 1 2018 to June 30 3019. Can somebody please help. Cheers Margot
At this point unfortunately there is no amalgamated summary of your business and personal account to generate reports. With regards to closing a year out, Wave doesn't close years out. You can however add a year end adjustment entry to start a new year, but of course this will require a journal entry!
Every time I do a profit/loss report and look at the expenses details - account transactions, the view shows me an accumulated balance of expenses on that expense since my first records. What I need is a report accumulating from the begin of the business year. As it is right now, this column is useless without any manual approach to close the ledgers at the end of year. There is a serious feature gap.
Hey @SchlauFuchs! Can you elaborate on that a little bit for me? I'd love to see a screenshot of those reports that you're referring to - you should be able to filter these reports down by date, but any context you have here would be fantastic!
Sure. Here is a screenshot of my report for Book expenses since begin of the year. Notice the starting balance:
There the starting balance is from the begin of times, not from the begin of the year or the begin of the financial year. Totally useless without a closing year process as discussed before.
You are able to make year end adjustment entries to start a new reconciliation period if you know that your previous year history was reconciled correctly. Check out that link to show you how. It should balance your account to $0
This is a picture of an expenses account, not a bank account, and I am not aware you reconcile expenses.
Also, do you know how many expenses accounts there are? It is exactly the point that we make that an accounting software should close a year automatically instead of forcing the user to do 50+ journal transactions by hand.
Dear team, i would like to know for the same company, how I can continue the account for the next year? Do I need to create a new business? should not be right? then can I have the two years report in comparison?
Thanks for your kind reply.
Lititia
Hey @Lititia! Thanks for reaching out here. I've merged your inquiry into a thread that would be able to provide you an answer! Please take a moment to review the rest of the thread, and let us know if you need any further clarification.
I am also here to add my voice on the year closing. I have been with Wave for over 10 years now, so thanks for the decade Wave! However, for each year end and the new year it has been very tedious, for the same reasons as AnasChaudry has explained above, and many similar situations each year - sorting and sifting through rows and rows of transactions to find where something has been changed or misplaced. So what’s the point of having an accounting program if it is so labour intensive and manual in the end? It just doesn’t make any sense that one can’t close off the year professionally, it’s a big disappointment on an otherwise wonderful software.
We have an issue where entries from a previous period have mysteriously changed and the period no longer balances. A locking feature would avoid this problem. It is costing me a lot of money having our account go back to re-reconcile the previous period to find what has changed. A locking feature is an important feature and without it, and as our business continue to grow, we will likely have to look at another accounting solution. Can you please provide an explanation from the product manager as to why this feature has not been escalated on the product roadmap?
Hi @skenway , thanks for reaching out about this. I've been in touch with our Product Manager and he let me know that the prioritization of what we're building is very important for the success of our customers and the ever-evolving software of Wave. As this is a known feature idea and something that even our Wave Advisors team would love to have, we will be looking to consider this in the future, but in full transparency it's just not a priority for Wave at this very moment in time. In the interim, thank you for sharing your feedback as well as how this affects you specifically.
Sadly AlexL's Feb 8/21 response has me googling 'alternatives to Wave Accounting'. No ability to close prior period/years is Accounting 101 and a serious gap in functionality. Too bad, there is so much about Wave I enjoy.
In hopes of bumping up a Year End Locking (Closing) type feature on the priority list and with respect for what Wave does do...
I'm dumbfounded as to how the lack of any kind of a period closing feature can be presented as a benefit. Lack of the feature provides the user with no options, while a well considered feature could provide benefits including the ability to turn it off.
Short of a total locking feature, something to aid the user to identify that they're adding/viewing/deleting an out-of-period transaction would be helpful. Such as out-of-period transactions with a shaded background or colored framing. This could be supplemented with the ability for the user to turn off the visual indicator until the end of the current session/day/week/month.
In 1990 a usability study was performed against then Daceasy and Pacioli 2000. Taken from comments, the 'best part' of the 3rd program was the ability to fix mistakes (that could only be done after making one and often after reaching some level of confusion or anxiety). The kinds of problems that these users experienced was very similar to the problems that result from changing transactions in a closed period.
I'm experienced with small business accounting but my wife isn't. She switched to Wave for it's simplicity about 6 years ago while medical problems leave me mostly uninvolved. My problems reoccur so her comfort with the accounting system going forward is important. She likes Wave and I like most of many of the programs including Wave but some of the shortcomings like this feature can create giant, lasting problems that only grow over time. Overall, we want to stick with Wave.
But not being able to close a period or at least be able to proactively notify/educate the user that there's a difference means a lesser experienced, or more focused user (say, one who only handles sales and COGS related transactions) could make any type of a change or adjustment and in any period without knowing if one or either is a problem. But the real problem starts when the entry they corrected was later identified as not a mistake or created a different problem. This is bad enough when it's all within the active period but if they go in-and-out of various periods, then it's bad. And printed copies of the data isn't a solution, it's a backup that often affords you the option to correct the result of the problem but only by using more time, and resources than were required to create it.
There's many reasons that I really like Wave, but PLEASE add some sort of closing controls so I can like it twice as much!
My accountant is telling me I need to switch to Quickbooks just because of the lack of this ONE function - to easily close out year end for the ledgers easily like Quickbooks!!
May have to do this than pay for the hours for multiple manual journal entries! Is this function in the pipeline soon??? Someone mentioned it's not a high priority in the pipeline but it is! Would love a status from the Wave Development team. Thank you.
Comments
Hey @AnasChaudry @JennaC
If your account went through a migration and your accounts are no longer reconciled I understand the frustration around this. My apologies. You are able to make year end adjustment entries to start a new reconciliation period if you know that your previous year history was reconciled correctly.
In the previous version of Wave, you had to go to the existing chart of accounts (CoA), choose Add an Account, and choose an existing pre-made account. If you couldn't find exactly what you were looking for, you were able to re-name any existing account. As a result, some users would be forced to choose something that closely matched what they desired, but wasn't the exact account type, or you could choose a random account and simply rename it.
In order to migrate users, we mapped the accounts in the previous version to the corresponding account and sub-type in the new version of Wave. There was no way for the system to interpret a custom-named account and map it to the new version. So, re-named accounts ended up migrating over as what they were originally intended for in the old account. This is likely what caused discrepancies in your reconciliation
My apologies about this. I understand that it has likely affected your bookkeeping, however, you are able to fix this with a bit of work.
Hey there @Margot
At this point unfortunately there is no amalgamated summary of your business and personal account to generate reports. With regards to closing a year out, Wave doesn't close years out. You can however add a year end adjustment entry to start a new year, but of course this will require a journal entry!
Every time I do a profit/loss report and look at the expenses details - account transactions, the view shows me an accumulated balance of expenses on that expense since my first records. What I need is a report accumulating from the begin of the business year. As it is right now, this column is useless without any manual approach to close the ledgers at the end of year. There is a serious feature gap.
Hey @SchlauFuchs! Can you elaborate on that a little bit for me? I'd love to see a screenshot of those reports that you're referring to - you should be able to filter these reports down by date, but any context you have here would be fantastic!
Sure. Here is a screenshot of my report for Book expenses since begin of the year. Notice the starting balance:
There the starting balance is from the begin of times, not from the begin of the year or the begin of the financial year. Totally useless without a closing year process as discussed before.
Hey there @SchlauFuchs
You are able to make year end adjustment entries to start a new reconciliation period if you know that your previous year history was reconciled correctly. Check out that link to show you how. It should balance your account to $0
This is a picture of an expenses account, not a bank account, and I am not aware you reconcile expenses.
Also, do you know how many expenses accounts there are? It is exactly the point that we make that an accounting software should close a year automatically instead of forcing the user to do 50+ journal transactions by hand.
Dear team, i would like to know for the same company, how I can continue the account for the next year? Do I need to create a new business? should not be right? then can I have the two years report in comparison?
Thanks for your kind reply.
Lititia
Hey @Lititia! Thanks for reaching out here. I've merged your inquiry into a thread that would be able to provide you an answer! Please take a moment to review the rest of the thread, and let us know if you need any further clarification.
I am also here to add my voice on the year closing. I have been with Wave for over 10 years now, so thanks for the decade Wave! However, for each year end and the new year it has been very tedious, for the same reasons as AnasChaudry has explained above, and many similar situations each year - sorting and sifting through rows and rows of transactions to find where something has been changed or misplaced. So what’s the point of having an accounting program if it is so labour intensive and manual in the end? It just doesn’t make any sense that one can’t close off the year professionally, it’s a big disappointment on an otherwise wonderful software.
Has there been any updates made to close an accounting period?
Hey there @cris4keeps
Merged your question into this thread for some more context. No updates on this for our product roadmap.
We have an issue where entries from a previous period have mysteriously changed and the period no longer balances. A locking feature would avoid this problem. It is costing me a lot of money having our account go back to re-reconcile the previous period to find what has changed. A locking feature is an important feature and without it, and as our business continue to grow, we will likely have to look at another accounting solution. Can you please provide an explanation from the product manager as to why this feature has not been escalated on the product roadmap?
Hi @skenway , thanks for reaching out about this. I've been in touch with our Product Manager and he let me know that the prioritization of what we're building is very important for the success of our customers and the ever-evolving software of Wave. As this is a known feature idea and something that even our Wave Advisors team would love to have, we will be looking to consider this in the future, but in full transparency it's just not a priority for Wave at this very moment in time. In the interim, thank you for sharing your feedback as well as how this affects you specifically.
Sadly AlexL's Feb 8/21 response has me googling 'alternatives to Wave Accounting'. No ability to close prior period/years is Accounting 101 and a serious gap in functionality. Too bad, there is so much about Wave I enjoy.
In hopes of bumping up a Year End Locking (Closing) type feature on the priority list and with respect for what Wave does do...
I'm dumbfounded as to how the lack of any kind of a period closing feature can be presented as a benefit. Lack of the feature provides the user with no options, while a well considered feature could provide benefits including the ability to turn it off.
Short of a total locking feature, something to aid the user to identify that they're adding/viewing/deleting an out-of-period transaction would be helpful. Such as out-of-period transactions with a shaded background or colored framing. This could be supplemented with the ability for the user to turn off the visual indicator until the end of the current session/day/week/month.
In 1990 a usability study was performed against then Daceasy and Pacioli 2000. Taken from comments, the 'best part' of the 3rd program was the ability to fix mistakes (that could only be done after making one and often after reaching some level of confusion or anxiety). The kinds of problems that these users experienced was very similar to the problems that result from changing transactions in a closed period.
I'm experienced with small business accounting but my wife isn't. She switched to Wave for it's simplicity about 6 years ago while medical problems leave me mostly uninvolved. My problems reoccur so her comfort with the accounting system going forward is important. She likes Wave and I like most of many of the programs including Wave but some of the shortcomings like this feature can create giant, lasting problems that only grow over time. Overall, we want to stick with Wave.
But not being able to close a period or at least be able to proactively notify/educate the user that there's a difference means a lesser experienced, or more focused user (say, one who only handles sales and COGS related transactions) could make any type of a change or adjustment and in any period without knowing if one or either is a problem. But the real problem starts when the entry they corrected was later identified as not a mistake or created a different problem. This is bad enough when it's all within the active period but if they go in-and-out of various periods, then it's bad. And printed copies of the data isn't a solution, it's a backup that often affords you the option to correct the result of the problem but only by using more time, and resources than were required to create it.
There's many reasons that I really like Wave, but PLEASE add some sort of closing controls so I can like it twice as much!
My accountant is telling me I need to switch to Quickbooks just because of the lack of this ONE function - to easily close out year end for the ledgers easily like Quickbooks!!
May have to do this than pay for the hours for multiple manual journal entries! Is this function in the pipeline soon??? Someone mentioned it's not a high priority in the pipeline but it is! Would love a status from the Wave Development team. Thank you.