Year End Procedures - General Ledger

The following is a checklist of steps. If you need detailed instructions on any of the steps below, please contact us at 901-382-1634. During the year-end closing routine, all the records that will be moved are put in a temporary table before they are moved to the GL30000 table. You must have free disk space that is equal to the size of the GL20000 table to perform the routine.

Note: To print this page, highlight the text, go to File | Print, and choose selection in the page range box.

q    1) Compete the posting procedure and the closing procedure (in the following order) for Inventory, Receivables, Payables, and Fixed Assets, if applicable.

NOTE: Year-end procedures for Payroll are only performed at the end of the calendar year.

q 2) Post the final adjusting entries in the General Ledger module. If you must make any adjusting entries to allocate revenue, expenses, or depreciation to the year that you are closing, use the Transaction Entry window or the Quick Journal Entry window. If you wish to track your adjustments separately, use the Second Closing Period feature. 

q    3) Use SmartList to verify the posting type of each account. Go to View | SmartList | Accounts. By default, only the first 1,000 accounts will be displayed. If you have more than 1,000 accounts, double click on the box at the bottom where it says "First 1,000 accounts with no search criteria" and increase the maximum records (in red at bottom). Click the header of the Posting Type column to sort by posting type. Scroll down to the change from Balance Sheet to Profit and Loss. Verify that the last Balance Sheet and the first Profit and Loss accounts are correct. Note that Great Plains treats all unit and allocation accounts as Balance Sheet, but the category will be zero.

q  4) Go to Reports | Financial | Accounts. Select All Accounts, then New. Type "all accounts" in the option field. If you are using 8.0 or later, put a check in the Inactive Accounts box. Select Destination | OK | Print. If you want to bring the balance forward, the account should be designated as Balance Sheet; if you prefer to close to a retained earnings account, the posting type must be set to Profit and Loss. You can make changes in the Account Maintenance window.

q  5) Close the last period of the fiscal year (optional). Use the Fiscal Periods Setup window. If you use FRx, keep one period in the most recent historical year open.

q 6) Perform file maintenance on the Financial Series group of modules. Go to File | Maintenance | Checklinks. Insert all of the financial series. Print the report to the screen. Go to Tools | Utilities | Financial | Reconcile.  Reconcile the year you are closing.

q 7) Verify the setup in the General ledger setup window. If you want to keep historical records, you must click to select the Accounts check box and the Transactions check box in the Maintain History area of the General Ledger Setup window.

q 8) Make a backup. (Go to File | Backup).

q 9) Print a final detailed trial balance.

q 10) Print any required year-end financial statements, e.g. balance sheet, profit and loss statement, statement of cash flows, and statement of retained earnings.

q 11) Set up a new fiscal year using the Fiscal Periods Setup window. Go to Tools | Setup | Company | Fiscal Periods.

q 12) Close the fiscal year. Click Tools | Routines | Financial | Year-End Closing. Specify an account in the Retained Earnings Account field (this account is where the year's profit or loss is closed to; if you want to distribute the retained earnings for the year to more than one account, you can specify an allocation account or a specific account segment). Specify the number that you want to use as the first journal entry number for the next fiscal year in the Starting Journal Entry field. Click Close Year to start the routine. If the progress window hangs at 50%, don't reboot.  It may take some time for it to close each account to retained earnings. As long as your hard drive is processing, let it continue. When the year-end closing routine is complete, the Year-End Closing Report is printed. This report lists the accounts that were closed and the transactions that were created to close those accounts. The Year-End Closing Report is part of the audit trail; save it for your company's permanent records. The Year-End Closing Report cannot be reprinted.

q 13) Close all fiscal periods for all series using the Fiscal Periods Setup window (optional).

q 14) Adjust budget figures for the new year and print financial statements. You can adjust your budget using Excel-Base Budgeting, Budget Maintenance, or Single-Account Budget Maintenance. Print the Profit and Loss Statement to verify that profit and loss accounts were closed to the retained earnings account. Print the Balance Sheet to verify that balance sheet accounts indicate that the balances were brought forward. If you are using Advanced Financial Analysis to print your financial statements, you must update the report layout to reflect the current fiscal year. Click Reports | Financial | Advanced Financial. Select the financial statement from the Reports list | Open | Layout. Double-click the first column heading. If the column type is set to Period Range, Year-to-Date, or Variable Year-to-Date, select the current fiscal year in the Year list | OK. Repeat for each column of each report.

q 15) Make a backup of all company data and put it in safe permanent storage.

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