General Ledger

A number of steps need to be done for the General Ledger module at year-end, with a few differences between version 5.1 and 6.1.  Below are those areas that need to be addressed:

1.   Suspense Account Distribution

Correctly distribute anything that is in the Suspense Account to the appropriate accounts before final posting the last period of the year that is ending so that the ending figures for the year are accurately represented.

2.   Control Year on Category P01

For version 6.1 and later versions, the control year on Category P01 needs to be changed to reflect the new year, and the Initialize Control File option needs to be run to initialize the control file with the new year.  This option is found on the General Ledger Menu.   This option should be run before processing begins for the first period of the new year.  Also, this will need to be run before Reversing Journals are entered for the last period of the year ending, since the reversing journal will need to write a journal to the next period, period one of the new year.

3.   Inception-to-Date Account

Create a Journal entry in period one to transfer the Year-End Balance in the YTD Retained Earnings Account into the Inception-to-Date Retained Earnings Account.  This process can be done manually or automatically, but it must be done at some point during period one.  It is best to transfer these balances PRIOR to the first demand post for period one to prevent amounts from the new year being included in the ITD account. 

If the transfer is done AFTER the first demand post, but still within period one, you will need to calculate the amount of retained earnings that has accumulated for the new year.  This amount will then need to be subtracted from the YTD Retained Earnings Account total that is transferred to the Inception-to-Date Retained Earnings Account in order to accurately reflect the Inception-to-Date amount for the year that is ending.

In order to have the system automatically transfer the YTD retained earnings account to the ITD retained earnings account, you must set the Automatic Retained Earnings Flag (AUT/RE) on Reference File category P01 (General Ledger Processing Options) to Y (Yes).  If you use the automatic function, the amounts are transferred when the first demand post is requested for period one.

Please note that you WILL NOT be able to transfer the YTD Retained Earnings to the Inception-to-Date in any period except period one.

4.   Year-End Journal Entry Reports (optional).

Because some governments require generation of a year-end journal entry report for your profit/loss accounts and your balance sheet accounts, you can request these reports in the General Ledger module.  The report shows what the closing entries of the General Ledger profit/loss accounts would be if they were generated.  In addition, an option on Reference File category 144, Year-End Report, allows you to specify whether the report will also show what the closing and opening entries of the balance sheet accounts would be.

The Year-End Journal Entry Program (GL290E) creates fictitious transactions on the report that are used to zero the report balance.  Each transaction is only generated on the report, no transactions are written to the accounting transaction files.

For each company/location, you can define a year-end account/center on Reference File category 144.  When the year-end journal entry report is generated, this account/center is used as an earnings account in the fictitious transaction to zero each account.  You may specify an account/center other than your retained earnings account on the category.

You can generate either one or three reports, depending on how you set up Reference File category 144.  The Profit and Loss Accounts Ending Journal Report is always printed; however, you may elect to print the Balance Sheet Accounts Ending Journal and the Balance Sheet Accounts Beginning Journal reports.  In addition, you choose to print the reports in detail or summary by setting a flag on category 144. 

You may request either list or final reports on the Year-End Journal Report Request Screen.  However, once the Final Year-End Journal Report is run, you cannot enter prior-period adjustment journals.

5.   Period One Posting

When you perform the GL Post (GL200P) for period one of the new year, the following automatically occur:

a)   If the AUT/RE Flag on Reference File category P01 is set to Y (yes), the amount in the YTD retained earnings account is automatically moved to the ITD retained earnings account.

b)   The Year-To-Date (YTD) Current Year amount for Income Statement accounts is rolled into YTD Last Year.  This will place the cumulative YTD amount into the last year field.

c)   Quarter-To-Date (QTD) and Year to Date (YTD) profit/loss, as well as QTD and YTD Budget Accounts, are reset to zero.

d)   The Final Period Actual Amount for Balance Sheet Accounts is rolled into Year-End Balance last year.  This places the cumulative YTD amount into the last year field.

6.   Transaction History

Balance information is saved on the system on the Financial Master File,  and can also be saved on the History Master File.  Version 5.1 and 6.1 (and later) save information on the Financial Master File differently.  In Version 5.1, two years will be stored, the previous and the current.  If you wish to have another year saved for version 5.1, you will need to copy it to history.  (For example if you are ending 1995, 1995 and 1996 will be kept on the system, and 1994 will not be kept on the Master File.  It will only be saved in the system if you copy it to the History File.)  For version 6.1 and later, multiple years of information are stored on the Financial Master File.

To maintain the History Master File, use the History Maintenance conversation from the General Ledger Menu, as explained below:

a)   Copy Current Master File to History:

Use this option if you wish to copy the current year's information that is on the Master File to the history file.  Copying the history to the history file needs to be done at the end of the fiscal year in order to get the year's history accurately represented on the history file.  The program will check to ensure that a given year's history is not already on the file, and will not allow the copy if it is.

Remember that this option will be more necessary for version 5.1 if you want previous year's histories to be saved.

Also note that this is the only option in this conversation needs to be done at year end.  The following options can be done at any point since they involve removing information that has previously been saved, or can be done at year end to clean up the file for the new year.  Below are descriptions of each, but please refer to the help text and General Ledger User Manual for this conversation for more information and detail on these options. 

b)   Remove Master File History

You can remove master file history records from the History Master file through this option.  This gives you the option to remove information from the history file that you no longer need.

c)   Delete Posted Journals

You can use the Delete Posted Journals option to remove those journals that have been posted.

d)   Delete Master File for Year

Versions 6.1 and later have an additional option to be able to remove master file information from a given year, since 6.1 and later versions store multiple years worth of information on the Master File.

e)   Delete Account/Center

This option allows you to delete a specific Account/Center Master File record.