Using SQLWorks Audit, accounting managers can generate key financial reports either ‘Live’ using real-time data, or from an enforced point in time.

This feature is available using the ‘Audit’ tool. When this tool runs, SQLWorks collates the most up-to-date financial data available from the accounts, to use for financial reports. Auditing can be performed immediately before the creation of a new report, by ticking the ‘Audit Matrix’ checkbox in the report options, to ensure the report shows ‘live’ data.

If the checkbox is left unticked, SQLWorks will report using figures from the last time the accounts were audited.

 

Auditing can also be run independently from the ‘Audit By Year’ option in the main SQLWorks Navbar, by right clicking on the financial year in the main list and clicking ‘Audit Year’. The adjacent column displays the date of the last successful audit. This can be used to manually designate an official Audited point in time, from which reports are run, until you are ready to re-audit.

‘Live’ data reporting is normally the preferred option, as it permits accounting managers to get an instant snapshot of the exact state of the business accounts at that moment in time.

Reporting from the last audited point in time may be more useful in certain situations however. On systems with large numbers of transactions being entered, some businesses prefer to draw a line in the sand, and report consistently from this point in time, until ready to perform the next official reporting audit.

To learn more about SQLWorks financial reporting, contact our team today.

For those using SQLWorks Hosted, the ability to access SQLWorks anywhere is a major advantage. However, doing this may mean you need access local resources to print a document from SQLWorks, connecting to a new printer on a network that is unfamiliar to SQLWorks.

To do this, you will need to allow your saved Microsoft Remote Desktop connection (where Hosted SQLWorks is accessed) permission to access your printer (one of your local resources ) You can either do this when first setting up your connection to SQLWorks Hosted, or edit your settings to include this option later.

On Windows, this option is available by editing your saved Remote Desktop Connection, and clicking on the ‘Local Resources’ tab. Tick the ‘Printers’ checkbox to allow printing from Hosted SQLWorks to your local printer.

On Mac, this option is available by editing your saved Remote Desktop Connection, and clicking on the ‘Local Resources’ tab. Tick the ‘Printers’ checkbox to allow printing from Hosted SQLWorks to your local printer.

As long as your cloud app on your PC/Mac is able to sync to the cloud, SQLWorks will be able to make most up-to-date version of your synced files available for drag and drop.

SQLWorks allows users to accurately report on EC VAT, as part of their VAT Ledger.

In order to report on EC VAT, every sales and purchase account to be included must first have a country and VAT reporting setting saved against it.

For each customer or supplier, this can be set under the ‘Bank and VAT’ tab in the Sales Ledger/Purchase Ledger.

To set up the customer/supplier for EC VAT reporting, choose the correct European country from the ‘VAT Country’ (SL) or ‘Country Name’ (PL) fields, and select the correct setting under ‘VAT Setup’. ‘INC’ is for accounts which need VAT to be included, ‘Exempt’ for accounts with reportable VAT of zero value, and ‘NRT’ for accounts with non-reportable VAT.

Whether the selected country is part of the EC VAT reporting can be set in the SQLWorks countries list (found under ‘Countries’ in Address Editor.) Double click a country from the list to edit it from ‘UK’ to ‘EU’ or ‘World’ and click save. The EU category may also be used to designate countries not formerly part of the European Union, but part of the European Economic Area (e.g.: Norway.)

System Administrators may wish to force users to include a company VAT number when dealing with EEA customers/suppliers, for tax reporting purposes – this policy can be enforced via Preferences > Accounts Prefs > ‘Finance, Analysis, Dept & Tax’* Tab, by ticking the ‘EEC VAT requires VAT No in:’ option for either Purchase Ledger (PL), Sales Ledger (SL) or both. This will restrict users from saving any new transactions against sales/purchase accounts without a known and saved company VAT number.

Accounting admins may also choose which nominal codes need to include or exclude VAT by choosing a nominal code in the Nominal Ledger, clicking edit, and ticking the ‘Add VAT’ checkbox in the top right, before saving.

SQLWorks will collate EC VAT figures in the VAT Ledger beside UK VAT, in the ‘EC VAT’ columns (1 & 2), and VAT Ledger users can click the ‘EC VAT’ buttons at the top of each EC Vat column to view the transactions included in that section.

The VAT Ledger will also produce EC VAT totals in the ‘Total’s group’ section at the bottom of the window (3). These are then used in the Form 100 totals, allowing SQLWorks accounts users to complete an accurate VAT return.

 

For additional help or SQLWorks accounting expertise – contact our team today.

*This tab may be labelled ‘VAT & Dates’ in older versions of SQLWorks.

This year Lineal’s SQLWorks Team traveled to Arnhem, The Netherlands, for the 4-day European Omnis Developers Conference – EurOmnis 2017.

Conference workshops offer the opportunity for developers from more than a dozen countries to exhibit their latest work, seek advice from other programmers and share best practice. A primarily educational event, EurOmnis brings together the brightest and best to further develop software projects and draw on a wider pool of knowledge.

Members of the Omnis Executive Team also attended to discuss the very latest developments of the platform, explain new features (such as remote debugging technology working live from the developer console) and gather valuable feedback from the wider Omnis developer community.

Managing Director of Lineal Software Solutions, Mike Matthews explained: “Over the many years during which we’ve helped organise EurOmnis, both the software itself and the Omnis Developers Group (ODEV) have gone from strength the strength.”

“This year’s conference studied some exciting breakthroughs in web development, mobile/tablet-friendly user interfaces, internet-of-things (IOT) examples, future API technology, and much, much more.”

“SQLWorks is designed to be a highly flexible business management software, and we greatly value contributions from the extraordinarily diverse range of industry sectors, creative skills and technical knowledge represented each year at EurOmnis.”

In addition to coding, EurOmnis 2017 attendees had the chance to visit and dine at the Kasteel Doorwerth, a medieval chateaux dating from before the 13th Century, and literary home of the Beaulieu restaurant, where Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema wrote Soldier of Orange.

See you next year!

 

Lineal are Omnis and business software development specialists – learn more here.

SQLWorks includes a range of accounting locks which allow data entry for business accounting to be restricted to certain time periods.

SQLWorks operates date based-accounting rather than ‘Period-based accounting’ in the commonly understood sense – this gives companies greater granularity over how accounting is controlled.

Because of this, SQLWorks accounting can be locked down* based on a number of different periods and conditions, depending on your preference:

• Financial Year Level Locking
• Monthly Locking
• VAT Period /  Quarterly Locking
• Appropriation Locking

 

Financial Year Level Lock

Year Level Locking is available from Audit > Audit by Year in the main SQLWorks Navbar, by right-clicking on the financial year and selecting ‘Lock Year’.

Financial years that have been locked will display a ‘Yes’ in the ‘Lock’ column of the financial years list, and will prevent SQLWorks users from making any changes to financial transactions within that year. However, nominal journals may still be posted to a locked year.

This lock should only be used by your SQLWorks Accounting Admin, and acts independently of all other accounting conditions.

 

Monthly Lock (Current Financial Year Only)

This lock can be made available in your Accounts Prefs, where individual months, or months within specific ledgers, can be locked or unlocked for current financial year.

By default, users can only post in the designated active financial year – however transitionary options are available here to allow temporary posting into the final period of the previous financial year if this is still Year Level unlocked.

Because this lock can be turned on/off by a user with sufficient privileges and are always reversible, this forms a ’soft’ lock accounting managers can deploy as a highly flexible ‘Month-end’ control or similar.

 

VAT Locking (Quarterly Lock)

The SQLWorks VAT Ledger allows users to calculate the UK tax return due for each VAT Quarter.

Once the VAT return has been complete, the date period covered by the specified VAT Quarter will be automatically locked against further accounting entries.

Reporting VAT accurately is a legal obligation, and additional transaction entries will not be permitted into the locked Quarter once VAT has been calculated for reporting to HMRC. Journaling between nominal codes is still permitted.

 

Appropriation Locking

Once you have set retained profit for a financial year (‘appropriated’ profit) the financial year will be locked, even if the financial year has not yet been Month, VAT or Year Level locked yet. No further transactions may be created in this year.

Because of this, Appropriation is usually only completed once year-end processing for that financial year has already been completed. For more information, please read: “1.1.2.4 – How to Set Retained Profit.”

 

*Under certain circumstances some accounting locks can be reversed – please speak to your SQLWorks team about this in more detail.

With SQLWorks Version 8 debuting later this year, we’re gathering feedback on what our clients would like to see after the upcoming major upgrade.

Version 8 will be our opportunity to make considerable improvements to both the technical capabilities and user experience of SQLWorks.

Our team’s development priorities have been shaped by the feedback our users have given us in recent weeks and months – please let us know your thoughts below:

 

Lineal will be launching a new major version of SQLWorks in 2017.

Version 8 will bring a host of new features to our flagship business management software, as well as provide existing SQLWorks customers a greatly improved user-experience.

Managing Director of Lineal Mike Matthews explained: “We were determined to release a major new version of SQLWorks this year, and wanted to implement the customer feedback we’ve been gathering in recent months.”

“By changing to the StudioWorks 8 framework, SQLWorks Version 8 will allow us to update the technology behind our business software – modernising the visual ‘look-and-feel’ to be more intuitive, adding greater flexibility, and offering more options for integration.”

Version 8 is expected to be available from Autumn 2017 – check back for more soon!

SQLWorks Accounting includes the option to enter Journals both manually, but also offers the chance to save time by importing journals from a spreadsheet of data directly to your Nominal Ledger.

When in the Nominal Ledger click ‘Journal’ in the top toolbar, and the add Journals window opens. To begin importing your journals, click the ‘Import Journal Option, and browse for the file you wish to import.

Imports must be imported using a fixed format from a template file: a copy of which can be found within your SQLWorks installation ‘Misc’ Folder as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet – or downloaded here. You will need to enter your data and save the file as a tab-delimited text (.txt) file before importing.

SQLWorks will warn you if the data you are seeking to import is old, and may block you from entering nominal journals into locked accounting periods.

Once importing journals has run successfully, your nominal journal data will appear in the list of journals to be added, and users can commit them to the Nominal Ledger by clicking ‘Save and Close’.

 

For accounting advice and support, contact the SQLWorks team today.