Year End Close AA Version 6

Active Accounting Year End Closing procedures

UDS would advise that you make a copy of the database you are using before beginning any of these year end procedures. This will allow you to easily revert back to the data as it was before the year end was run.

General Ledger: - End of Fiscal Year

1) Everyone must be out of Active Accounting. Make sure you have posted all the transactions from the applications (Reports/General Ledger/GL Transaction Posting). You cannot post the new year’s information to general ledger until you have closed the year. If you do you will need to reverse the GL transactions out and enter them into the new year's database manually after you have closed the year.

2) Run an Income Statement and Balance Sheet (if necessary) for your company.

3) Print a General Ledger report for all periods. This is not required since you have made a copy of your database, but gives you a hard copy of the general ledger transactions and account balances and is essential for auditing. This probably will be a very lengthy report.

4) To close the General Ledger year, select from the main menu- Reports/General Ledger/Year End Procedure. The first screen to appear will be that shown below in fig 1. Follow the directions in this window the first being: "...close all UDS applications using this database". The next line down displays your existing path and database name so you can confirm that you are performing the year end close on the intended database. This window provides a white box in which to enter a path and database name to assign to the copy of your database that will be created by this first step in the year end close process. The most simple and safe approach would be to simply enter an identical path with the slight exception of adding the year number being closed to the database name. The addition of the closing year number makes the database name unique and also makes it clearly identifiable for later use. We've taken our own advice as shown in our example below except that we shortened the database name down even further to: "Acme2002.mdb".

Note: Whatever path and database name you do enter should use a drive letter and folder that already exist. If you do not use a drive letter and folder name that already exist, the year end process will not continue.

fig 1

5) Click on the Start Process button shown in fig 1 above to continue closing the G/L year.

6) Now you must close out of Active Accounting entirely. Exit Active Accounting.

7) One and only one system should now start Active Accounting again. Select from the main menu- Reports/General Ledger/Year End Procedure. This time the window shown below fig 2 will appear:

fig 2

8) Company to Close: Your current company number may appear already filled in. Key it in if not.

9) Period to Post Entries: The period to post to is usually period 12 unless you are on a 13 period accounting system. Key in your period number choice.

10) Close of Year Date: Defaults to today's date and represents only the date you performed this year end close procedure.

11) Click OK button in fig 2 to complete the automatic processing of the G/L Year End. A G/L Closing report will print listing your G/L Account Credit or Debit Balances.

12) From the main menu click on File/View/General Ledger/GL Company, to bring up the G/L Company View form shown in fig 3 below. Open your G/L Company record. In our example the period dates have automatically been updated to the first day of each month in the year 2003. If your fiscal year is different than the January/December year, simply key in or use the calendar function available on each field to enter your preferred monthly period dates. Then 'save' your G/L Company changes.

fig 3

Starting Over:

It is not possible to reverse the year-end procedure. However, if you discover something that should have been performed before closing and wasn't, simply restore the original 'copy' you made of the database, do what needs to be done to it, and begin the year-end procedure all over again using that copy.

Using the Saved Database:

You will be able to use the 'saved' company created in step 4 above to enter transactions for that year that couldn't be entered before closing, print reports, look up information, create comparative financial statements, or to apply any adjusting transactions you get from you accountant. Once any adjusting transactions are entered and posted, you will need to get the ending balance of the accounts affected and change the beginning balance of those accounts in the current company. To access this 'saved' database select from the main menu- File/Open Data (*.mdb). Navigate to the 'saved' database and 'open' it. This menu option allows switching between databases without having to close and reopen Active Accounting completely each time you would like to use another database. If the Open Data option can't be selected, make certain that all application screens and windows from the current database in use are closed before you try again.

Billing: - Either end of Calendar or Fiscal Year

1) Make sure you run any inventory reports you need that have the Shipped This Year field on them.

2) Make sure you have entered and posted any invoices and payments you wish to be in the current year so the General Ledger Transactions are created.

3) Once all the reports have been printed, click Reports, Accounts Receivable, and Customer-Inventory Yearend. This is the Billing Year End Procedure. It moves the Shipped This Year to the Shipped Last Year and zeros the Shipped This Year in the inventory. Also it moves the Purchases This Year to Purchase Last Year and zeros the Purchases This Year in the customer file. Also does the same for Accumulated Service Charges.

4) You may wish to do a physical inventory and update the on hand quantities.

5) This concludes the Billing Year End Procedure.

Payroll: - End of Calendar Year

1) On the last payroll cycle of the year, make sure you check the Close Month, Quarter, and Year options on Begin Payroll Cycle. This will move the current year’s information to a quarterly table when check print is completed. From this table you will print the W2s and any quarterly reports you need. Do not do this twice or you will lose your yearend information.

2) If you do not close the year on the last payroll cycle you must close it before you run the first payroll of next year. To do this you must run Begin Payroll Cycle and check the Close Month, Quarter, and Year options. Then run Check Register, then Check Print. It will not print any checks but it must go through the process. This will close the year.

3) Once the last payroll cycle is completed, run any reports you need before beginning the next payroll cycle. At the beginning of the next payroll cycle all YTD balance information will be zeroed.

4) W2s may be printed any number of times until the end of the next quarter.

5) Payroll history reports can be run at any time for any time period because they are date dependent reports.

6) Once the next payroll cycle is started all the figures in the employee, department, and voluntary deduction files are set to zero.

Accounts Payable: - End of Calendar Year

1) Run a vendor history list if you want a hard copy of the vendor purchases information.

2) 1099 can be printed before or after the yearend procedure. You just need to tell the computer whether you have closed the year or not.

3) To close the year, click Reports, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Payable Yearend. This will move the Vendor Purchases This Year to Purchase Last Year and Purchase This Year is zeroed.