Each individual company according to their own business procedures establishes year end closing procedures. Typically, a company will create a monthly accounting calendar, which sets the dates for each department to have completed all transactions for the particular month. The administrator (usually the company’s accounting manager or controller) of the calendar monitors activity to ensure all work has been completed and all transactions for the current period have been posted by the due dates established. Once all activities for the month have been completed, the accounting period is set to the status of Closed to ensure no transactions can be posted into that period completed period.
SedonaOffice has only one requirement to be able to close a fiscal year; all accounting periods in the current fiscal year must be set to a Closed status. If a User attempts to set an accounting period status to Closed and the deferred income for that period has not been completely recognized, a warning message will be displayed to the User. To set the accounting period status to closed, select Accounting Periods from the General Ledger module option list. Click on the status field of the month to be closed. A drop-down arrow will appear; click the arrow and select Closed from the list of choices. If the next accounting period has not yet been opened, click on the status field of the next accounting month and select the status of Open from the drop-down list. At the top of the Accounting Periods form set the current accounting period to the month in which your company is now conducting business.
Once all accounting periods have been closed, the fiscal year close may be performed.
It is highly recommended that all reports your company produces for year-end reporting be saved electronically to a secure location in the event these reports need to be accessed in the future. All SedonaOffice reports may be exported to an electronic file.
It is also highly recommended that a backup of the SedonaOffice database be made to a CD, DVD or some other media that may be stored off-site in a secure location, prior to performing the close.
To Close the current Fiscal Accounting Year, follow the instructions below.
1. Navigate to the General Ledger module from the Main Application Menu and select the Close Fiscal Year option.
2. The Close Fiscal Year form will be displayed. Verify each item on the list has been completed then select the box to the left of each item to confirm the task has been accomplished. Other than the Deferred Income is Recognized item, the software does not validate that the items have actually been completed. This checklist serves as a reminder to make certain each item has been completed.
Once all items have been checked, the Save button at the bottom of the form will be enabled. Click the Save button to execute the fiscal year closing process.
