General Ledger End of Period Options

Print Status Reports - GL 201

Print Trial Balance - GL 202

PPrint General Ledger - GL 203

Print Financial Statements - GL 204

Officially Close Month - GL 205

Officially Close Year - GL 206

Once you close a month or year in the G/L, you can no longer post journal entries to it. The system ensures all months are closed in sequence, and that the end-of-year closing is complete before months of the new year can be closed.

The system also prevents the closing of a current period if the prior year has not been closed. This functionality can have an impact during the Dec/Jan time frame. For example, if you try to close the current date of Jan 2008, but Dec 2007 is still open, you will receive an error message telling you that the prior year is still open and most be closed before the current month can be closed.

Period Status Report - GL 107 produces a report that lists the status of all periods available on the system. It displays 36 consecutive months usually including the past fiscal year, the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year.

Print Status Reports - GL 201

This report prints the Batch Status and the Period Status.

1. On the General Ledger Menu., select option 201 - Print Status Reports and press Enter.
2. Type a one-digit Company # for the month you want to close, and press Enter. The following screen appears.
3. Type the Posting Month, in YYMM format, for which you want to close and press Enter. At this point, the report prints and the system verifies that the month you requested is approved for closing. If no problems are found, the following message appears:
   • Posting Month 9901, for Company# 2 is Approved for Closing
   • If the month cannot be closed because a previous month is still open, the following message appears:
   • A Previous Month is Still Open! You must Close Previous Month Before Closing This Month. 9901
   • When this message appears, check your Period Status Report to see which previous month is still open. The system checks for other possible problems and displays the appropriate message, if necessary. Use the Batch Status Report and Period Status Report to make sure the status of the system is as expected and ready for the month-end close. All prior periods should have been closed, and all existing batches should be closed, except those relating to future months. Remember Batch 00 contains the journal entries that automatically post from other applications on your system. Batch 00 must be closed before proceeding.

Print Trial Balance - GL 202

The Trial Balance Report shows the activity, the beginning balance, and ending balance for each account in the chart of accounts for the month that you have requested. It also shows a recap of total assets, liabilities, equity, income, expenses, and net profit/loss year-to-date. You can run this step more than once, if you want to run reports for each branch, as well as for the company. If you will be running a G/L printout, you may not need to run the Trial Balance. The General Ledger is basically a detailed version of the trial balance.

Print General Ledger - GL 203

The General Ledger Report lists the beginning balance, ending balance, and all journal entries (J/E) that have affected every account in the chart of accounts for the month you have requested. The G/L shows all details of each J/E, such as descriptions, branches, cost centers, account numbers, and account names. It also puts an asterisk (*) next to any journals that have notes attached (notepad entries made when the journal was entered and updated) and prints all notes as footnotes to the report. The G/L Report can optionally show the detail A/P transactions that make-up the J/Es that are automatically summarized and posted to the G/L. The A/P details, when requested, show information such as vendor name, vendor invoice number, and description. This report can be run multiple times and for separate branches, as well as by company.

1. From General Ledger/End of Period Menu., select option 203 - Print General Ledger, and press Enter.
2. Enter a one-digit Company #, and press Enter.
3. Enter A to print the G/L for the company as a whole.
   • Do not enter ALL. If you enter ALL you are requesting a G/L for the branch called ALL, which was sent up in the File Maintenance Menu.
4. On the next screen, enter one cost center or all cost centers, and press Enter.
5. On the next screen, enter a Posting Month in a YYMM format (the month that you want to close). Press Enter.
6. Do one of the following:
   • Enter Y to print all A/P transactions that affected a particular account number. The supporting A/P shows the vendor name, amount of the invoice, and any description that was entered when an invoice from the vendor was recorded.
   • Enter N if you do not want to print a supporting A/P transactions but want a list of subtotals for each account number by cost center and branch. Also note that the supporting detail was probably listed as part of the Accounts Payable month-end close and is always available both via audit trails and the A/P history screens.

Print Financial Statements - GL 204

This program prints all the financial statements numbered from 001 - 100. These are the formal statements designed using the G/L Report Generator. You can run this step multiple times, for separate branches as well as by company. The Account Groups Update Report is useful only if you want to audit the contents of each subtotal that appears on the financial statements or to list detailed information to use with other computers or manually prepared reports.

1. From General Ledger Menu., select option 204 - Print Financial Statements, and press Enter.
2. Enter option 1, 2, 3, or 4, and press Enter.
3. Enter a one-digit Company #, and press Enter.
4. Enter a three-character branch number to run financial statements for a single branch.You can also enter A to print the financial statements for all branches. Press Enter.
   • If you type ALL, you are requesting financial statements for the branch called ALL which was set up in the File Maintenance Menu. You probably want to enter A, not ALL.
5. On the next screen, enter one cost center or all cost centers. Press Enter.
6. Enter the month for which you want to run the reports in a YYMM format. Press Enter.
7. Enter the Budget # to use on reports or CH to use the Chart of Accounts budget.
8. Enter the Budget Year if the budget number is used instead of the Chart of accounts budget. Press Enter. The balance sheet is listed on Job Queue and ready to print.
9. On the next screen, enter the First and Last G/L Report # for the report range you want to run and press Enter. The reports are generated and sent to the job queue.

Officially Close Month - GL 205

This is the step that actually closes the month. At this point, you can still run or rerun options 1 - 4 on the General Ledger/End of Period Menu. You can also resume entering journal entries for this month. However, once you run this step, you cannot post additional journal entries into this month.

Prevent General Ledger EOM Until all Batches are at Closed Status

1. From General Ledger Menu, select option 205 - Officially Close Month and press Enter.
2. On the screen that appear enter Y and press Enter.
3. Type a one-digit Company #, and press Enter.
4. Enter the Posting Month, in YYMM format, for which you want to close and press Enter.
5. At this point, if you decide not to close the month, enter option N. This brings you back to General Ledger Menu without closing the month. If you enter option Y, the system checks to see if the month is approved for closing. The following message appears if the previous month has not been closed:

A Previous Month is Still Open!

You Must Close Previous Month Before Closing This Month. 8901

The system ensures that the month is in the proper status for closing, and issues the appropriate error message, if necessary.

If the month is approved for closing, the following message appears:

Posting Month 9107, for Company# 2 Is Approved for Closing.

- COMPANY# 2, 9101 GENERAL LEDGER EOM FILE UPDATES WILL BE - PROCESSED -

6. If you decide not to close the month, type N and press Enter. This brings you back to Menu G/LEOM without closing the month. If you type Y and press Enter, the system closes the month. The system moves all of the month’s transactions from Current to History file. You can no longer post journal entries in this month.

When the month close is complete, the following message appears:

*** COMPANY# 2,9107 END OF MONTH CLOSE IS COMPLETE ***

Prevent General Ledger EOM Until all Batches are at Closed Status

If you are performing a G/L EOM close and there are open batches that affect the company and the period being closed, a screen appears that identifies the open batches. Periods cannot be closed if there are open journal entries with the same posting month as the G/L month that is being closed. This reduces G/L errors by not allowing periods to be closed until all journals are accounted for.

The open batches shown must be closed out before the EOM process can be completed.

To check for open batches

1. Go to the Master G/L menu (option 23 on General Ledger/End of Month menu).
2. Enter option 1 - G/L Entry & Inquiry Menu.
3. Enter option 2 - Edit G/L Journals.
4. Enter the single-digit Company #.
5. Enter the numbers of the batches displayed on the Batch Status Verification screen or code A to include all batches.
6. Press Enter to generate a G/L report that will help you to find the open batches.

You should close batches that are valid, and delete batches if they should not be included in the month they are assigned to.

Officially Close Year - GL 206

Before you close the year, make sure you print all of your financial statements. Once the year is closed, you can only request a formal financial statement for the closed year by running a current financial statement and including a column for Previous Year. However, all data from a closed year is still available on G/L spreadsheets, audits, and screen inquiries.

1. From General Ledger Menu, select option 206 - Officially Close Year, and press Enter.
2. Enter N to go back to the General Ledger/End of Period without closing the year. Enter Y to continue. Press Enter.
3. Type a one-digit Company #.
4. Type the Last Posting Month, in MMYY format, of the year you want to close. Press Enter.
5. Select option N if you do not want to close the year. You return to the General Ledger/End of Period Menu. Select option Y if you want the system to verify all months of the year have been closed. If a month is still open, the following message appears:

At Least 1 Month In Year Ending 9112 is Still Open!

You Must Close All Months Of A Year Before Closing A Year!

6. To find out which month is still open, refer to the Period Status Report for any months open. You must close the months that are open before you can close the year. The system checks for other errors and issues the appropriate error message, if necessary.

If the year was approved for closing the following message appears:

Year Ending 9112, for Company# 2 is Approved For Closing.

COMPANY# 2, G/L END OF YEA/R FILE UPDATES WILL BE PROCESSED

7. Type N and press Enter to return to the General Ledger/End of Period Menu without closing the year. If you type Y and press Enter, the system resets the balances in the Chart of Accounts File. All transactions in the closed year are moved from Current to Previous Year. All income and expense accounts are set to zero balance and the total of all income and expense year-end balances are posted to the retained earnings account. This is done for the company and for all branches within the company.

The following message appears when the system completes year-end close:

***COMPANY 2 END OF YEAR CLOSE IS COMPLETE ***