This routine closes the oldest open accounting year. A year closing means that transactions can no longer be posted to the closed year, and that the balances of the trade accounts are cleared for the new year. The closing balances on the balance accounts, and thereby the opening balances of the following year will also become definite.
Before you perform the year end closing, you can work with parallel accounting in two years. The entries on your balance accounts in the old year will automatically update the opening balances in the following year when you update G/L transactions and balances.
The closing of a year is not to be confused with the year roll-over that is performed in the backup routine when the system date agrees with, or has passed, the ending date of the last normal period (as defined in the G/L control file).
A year roll-over implies that:
- Your new year is proposed when you enter transactions, but you can still enter your transactions in any other unclosed period of an unclosed year of your choice.
- Your statistics files are updated to show statistics for the new year as the current one.
- Your balances that have become too old (according to the number of years permissible by the G/L control file) will be deleted.
You close the year by closing the last period of an accounting year. However, before this, you must transfer the year’s operating results to an appropriate balance account. You can do this by three different methods.
- The operating results can be retrieved through the close account period routine, and transfers should be posted manually. See Close an accounting year.
- The result can be taken from a balance report through the year end date, and should be posted manually.
- The result can be posted automatically through the routine Work with year end transactions. See About working with year end transactions for further instructions.
If the result is not entered, the balance accounts will not balance to zero, and the year end closing cannot be performed.
Tip: Certain procedures must be followed in order to correctly close a fiscal year and to begin a new one. These instructions are outlined in Turn-of-year procedures – DC1.
Enquiries and printouts
- G/L control file enquiry – showing the last period that you have closed.
- G/L closing balance list – showing the closing balance for all balance accounts.
- G/L opening balance list – showing the opening balance for all balance accounts.
- G/L update printouts.