Error: "The ledger is out of balance. Please balance your ledger and then initiate the migration again"
This support note applies to:
AE MAS (AU)
AE MAS (NZ)
AO Classic General Ledger (AU)
AO Classic (NZ)
AE Accounts (AU)
Article ID: 37515
In MYOB Accountants Enterprise (AE) or Accountants Office (AO) Ledger, you may experience the error "The ledger is out of balance. Please balance your ledger and then initiate the migration again" when migrating to the AE or AO Ledger.
This message generally occurs when either the Trial Balance is out of balance or where the balance of any control account is not the sum of all subaccounts. However, depending on the type of ledger you are migrating from there can be other factors that can cause this issue even though the ledger balances.
With all products, the first step to resolving this issue is to balance the ledger. If the ledger is already balanced and you still receive the error, choose your product below and check each item.
If the ledger you are migrating to AE or AO ledger is a MAS ledger, to resolve this issue you'll need to:
Check that the MAS ledger balances
To migrate a ledger from MAS to AE or AO ledger, the MAS ledger must first be in balance.
We recommend checking the detailed Trial Balance report to ensure all your debits and credits are aligned. If your detailed Trial Balance balances, you may also want to run a summarised Trial Balance report to ensure the sum of your sub-accounts equal the balance that displays for the control account.
If the error still occurs after the ledger has been balanced, check your Share of Profit accounts to make sure that there are no manual journal entries to these accounts. You can either delete the entry or post them into another account.
Rebuild the MAS ledger
If your balances aren't quite right, take a backup of the ledger and perform a Rebuild. This will rebuild the data files and recalculate balances.
Open the MAS ledger and from the Utilities menu, select Rebuild. The message "This process will rebuild data files & recalculate all balances, any early Exit from this routine, will require a restoration of original data" appears.
Click Proceed. The routine runs and the MAS detail screen appears.
Click OK.
AO Classic General Ledger
If the ledger you are migrating to AE or AO ledger is an AO Classic General Ledger (GL), to resolve this issue you'll need to:
Check that the General ledger balances
To migrate a ledger from MAS to AE or AO ledger, the general ledger must first be in balance. We recommend checking the Trial Balance report to ensure all your debits and credits are aligned.
If your balances aren't quite right, try taking a backup of the ledger and recalculating the balances.
Check the Income allocation definition under General Ledger > Income Allocation Definition. Ensure there is an account (or more in the case of a partnership) and it is allocated to 100%.
The Profit and Loss account should not have any transactions assigned to it. For example, for a company entity the account 639 - Current Year Earnings shouldn't have any journals to this account.
If there are transactions in the income allocation account, these need to be reallocated another account.
Delete any unused accounts
If your ledger balances, you may need to delete any unused accounts.
If there aren't many unused accounts in the Accounts Maintenance for your client, you can delete individual account codes by selecting the account you wish to delete and pressing F8 on the keyboard.
If there are a large number of account codes not being used, you can also delete these in bulk. For more information as well as detailed steps on how to delete account codes, refer to Deleting account codes in AO Classic General Ledger
Check the chart of accounts for multiple sub-account masters
Check that there is no more than one sub account master (i.e. control account) per sub-account by reviewing the Chart of Accounts report. For example, the account 198/01 should only have one sub account master, being the account code 198.
To print the chart of accounts:
From your client's general ledger, click the Reports menu and select Chart of Accounts Reports.
Select Standard Chart of Accounts Report and click Next, then Print.
Ensure the correct printer is selected and click OK.
AE Accounts
If the ledger you are migrating to AE ledger is an AE Accounts ledger, to resolve this issue you'll need to:
Check that the AE Accounts ledger balances
To migrate a ledger from AE Accounts to AE ledger, the Accounts ledger must first be in balance.
We recommend checking the Trial Balance report in Reporter to ensure all your debits and credits are aligned. If you need to distribute any profit to partners or beneficiaries, you'll need to do this when you Verify the ledger.
Open the Accounts ledger and follow the menu path: Reports > Report Setup > Linked Accounts. The Linked Accounts window appears.
Check that the account codes used on the Debit Account column and Credit Account column appear only once. If there is an account code used more than once, select Edit and focus on the duplicated account code. The duplicated account code is selected.
Type D to delete one of the links. The extra link is deleted.
Then press F4 to save and exit then press F5 to refresh the data. The data is updated. When you view the Trial Balance, it balances and reconciles to the General Ledger report.
Check and remove roundoff codes
From within your client's AE Accounts ledger, follow the menu path File > Properties > General...
Ensure that the ROUNDOFF CODE field is blank. If there is a code in the ROUNDOFF CODE field, you'll need to remove it as follows:
On your keyboard, press the down arrow key until the cursor appears in the ROUNDOFF CODE field.
With the cursor in the ROUNDOFF CODE field, press the Delete key on the keyboard.
Press the ENTER key until the General window closes.
Check and amend blank account names
To identify blank account names
From within your client's AE Accounts ledger, follow the menu path: Reports > Reporter > Design Client Reports.
Click the Chart Map tab located on the bottom left of the Practice Report Designer window. A list of Chart Map folders appear in the left-hand pane.
Click the button next to the Management folder. The Management subfolders appear.
With the TrialBalance folder selected, click the View Account Details icon on the Exploring Chart Map toolbar.
The CM.Management.TrialBalance window appears in the right-hand pane.
Click the drop-down menu next to Show sub codes and select Always, then tick the Include zero balances checkbox.
To edit account names
From within your client's AE Accounts ledger, follow the menu path Ledger > Account and SubaccountTitles. The Account and Subaccount Titles window appears with the cursor in the CODE field.
In the CODE field, enter an Account Code, then press the TAB key on the keyboard. The cursor moves to the TITLE field.
In the TITLE field, enter the name of the account, then press the TAB key on the keyboard. The cursor moves to the next row in the CODE field.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each account code without a name. When finished, Press F4 on the keyboard to exit and save the changes.
To edit division/branch names
From within your client's AE Accounts ledger, follow the menu path Ledger > Branch and Division Titles. TheBranch and Division Titleswindow appears with the cursor in the GROUP field.
Enter the group number and division number. In the example above, The group number is 4 and the division number is 1.
For the Division field, enter the name of the division in the Title column.
Press the ENTER key until the division number and title disappear and the cursor reappears in the group column.
Repeat steps 2 to 4 for each Profit and Loss group and Division. When finished, press F4 on the keyboard to save and exit the Branch and Division Titles window.
If you're experiencing this error when migrating an AE Accounts ledger in Client Accounting version 5.4.27 or above, ensure that there are no balances posted to control accounts where the control account has existing sub accounts.
