You should close the period at the end of each month and close the year at the end of the fiscal year. Closing the period moves all zero-balance invoices from the Current file to the History file. Invoices that have a balance due remain in the Current file. Closing the year resets the customer Year to date balances to zero as of the time of the closing.
Before you close the period, make sure all data and index files are backed up. All bills and reports for the period should be printed before you follow this procedure.
Period closing consists of several steps that prepare your data for the next period:
- Make sure all freight bills for the month have been processed and printed.
- Back up all data and index files. Freight Billing Data is usually stored in the FRDATA directory. The data file names end with the .DBF extension. The index file names end with the .CDX extension.
- Print the reports you want to use for your record keeping and analysis.
- If billing is linked to General Ledger, release the transactions to the G/L.
When you have completed these steps, you can close the period.
How do I close the period/year in Horizon Billing?
From the Billing Menu, select Period End Closing. A dialog box with the prompt “What would you like to close:” is displayed.
Do one of the following:
- To close only the current period, click on Period.
- To close both the current period and the year, click on Period & Year.
Complete the option grid.
NOTE: We suggest that you do not delete history during the closing process. Use the Purge function in File Maintenance to remove history if necessary.
Check that you've completed the option grid correctly and click on save button.
If the prompt “There are transactions that have not been released. Continue Period Closing?” is displayed, do one of the following:
If you have entered transactions for the next period, and you want to close the current period without releasing the next period's transactions to the general ledger, click on Yes.
If you have not entered transactions for the next period, and you want to release transactions before you continue with the period close, click on No.
The prompt “Confirm closing?” is displayed.
To quit without closing the period, click on No. To continue with closing, click on Yes.
If you selected to print reports, make sure the printer is ready because reports are printed first.
NOTE: we suggest that you print all necessary reports BEFORE closing, not during this process.
Customer history and invoice history are updated. Current data files are rebuilt and indexed.
When processing is complete, the message “Closing completed” is displayed. Click OK to close the dialog.
When should the period/year be closed in Sage Pro?
At the end of each accounting period, close the period for each application. Closing the period keeps your accounting information more accurate by isolating information within specific ranges of time.
You control the period-end and year-end close for all Pro Series applications through System Manager. When you close the period, you should do so in all applications except Payroll (see below) to ensure that reports and inquiries reference the same time periods.
For statutory reasons, you should close Sage Pro ERP Payroll quarterly instead of using the period-close schedule established for your other Sage Pro ERP applications.
The quarterly Payroll close processing is identical to the period-close processing described below, except that only payroll transactions and files are processed.
What happens during the period/year closing process?
The following list summarizes what happens when you close the period. For a more detailed description of the effects of closing each application, see that program’s documentation.
Users can select multiple applications associated with a single company and close them as a group.
The period close process no longer moves transactions to history or deletes transactions from history.
Users can now move transactions to history using the Transactions, Archive Transactions menu option.
Users can now delete transactions from history using the Transactions, Purge Transactions from Archive menu option.
Transactions history is selected on Sage Pro ERP reports using a date range option.
The Payroll application is closed using either the Close Period, Close Payroll Quarter or the Close Payroll Quarter and Year menu option.
When you close the period in General Ledger, the corresponding period in the company’s fiscal calendar is marked as closed.
During the year-end closing, the program clears the year-to-date figures.
When you close the last period of the year, you do not need to close the period and then close the year. Choose Transaction, Close Period, Close Period and Year to close them both at the same time. In an application that is linked to General Ledger, you should release information to General Ledger immediately before closing the period or year.
When is exclusive access required during the closing process?
If you are closing a period in AP, PO, AR, SO, or IC, exclusive access is not required and users can perform transactions in the application at the same time the period is being closed.
The period close program will specifically lock the tables and records which need to be updated and release them as soon as the update is complete. Exclusive access to the GL and JC applications is required during period close. If you are closing the year,
exclusive access to all applications is required during the closing process.
The Closing the Period and Year, Archiving Transactions and Purging Transactions features require exclusive access to all applications. The program checks for active users and if any are found in an application requiring exclusive access, or an application linked to that application, a message is displayed that exclusive access cannot be acquired until
all active users are cleared.
What needs to be done prior to closing?
Preclosing Checklist
Most Sage Pro ERP accounting data consists of files that contain "nouns" (Vendors, Customers, GL Accounts, Items, Employees), and "verbs" (Checks, Invoices,
Journal Entries, Inventory Receipts, Paychecks).
There's not necessarily a one-to-one relationship between these nouns and verbs; just like in a sentence, a noun may relate to more than one verb, or two nouns may relate to one verb. “Verb” actions in Sage Pro ERP update “noun” items. For example, when you print a paycheck, the system updates YTD and PTD paid amounts in employee and company data files.
If everything goes smoothly, at the end of the period, the YTD and PTD amounts in the "noun" file are equal to the total of the amounts in the records for the year or period
in the "verb" file. However, due to system interruptions that can occur during a transaction, the "verb" file may be updated, and the "noun" file may not. For example, you print employee paychecks, and the check file contains the amounts, but the employee period-to-date field does not.
Note: Even though data files may not actually be corrupted by an interruption, they may no longer be consistent with each other. For example, the total of paycheck amounts
in the check file for an employee may not equal the total pay amount in the employee file.
This can happen in any system, and the program has no control over whether it happens or not. Normally, you fix this as soon as you know it happened. However, if you don't know it happened, you can find out. You print certain reports and cross-check them before you close the period.
Sage Software Technical Support cannot repair data files that have become corrupt or inconsistent. If there's a problem, your Solution Provider may be able to fix it, but it may require detailed (and perhaps costly) data analysis.
In s
Bob Hogan
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