Financial Calendar

Open Period Accounting uses a calendar where you define your financial years with up to a maximum of 24 periods in each year. You can define a financial calendar for this year, last year, and three future years. Each year has description, a year end date and the required number of periods. Each period in the financial year has a start date, a period description that is displayed throughout the application, and an indicator that controls whether transaction postings are allowed in the period. In each financial calendar you can choose whether an individual accounting period is open, closed or blocked for postings.

Box	Description
Year	The calendar's year. The years available depend on the financial years that have been set up. The year for the current financial year is entered on the Set Options form but its calendar is managed on the Financial Calendar form.
Year End Date	The last day of the financial year for the financial calendar.
Desc.	A description for the financial year which could be 'Financial Year 2010' if the year runs from January 2010 to December 2010 or perhaps 'April 2009 to March 2010' if the financial year starts and ends in different calendar years.
Start Date	The start date for the selected period. The date must be after the previous period's start date and before the start date for the first period of the next year's financial calendar.
Period Desc.	The 'friendly name' for the period. If there are 12 periods in the year a default description using the first three letters in each month's name followed by the year is provided. For example, 'Jan 2010', 'Feb 2010', 'Mar 2010', and so on. If there are more than 12 periods, the description is based on the period number. For example, 'Period 1', 'Period 2, 'Period 3' and so on. You can change the name if required.
Period Status	Each period in the financial calendar has a status for each module that updates the Nominal Ledger. The status controls whether transactions that were posted in the modules listed below is allowed to update the Nominal Ledger. You can set periods to 'Open', 'Closed' or 'Blocked' for each of these modules: Nominal Ledger (and Cashbook) Sales Ledger (and Invoicing/Sales Order Processing) Purchase Ledger (and Purchase Order Processing) Stock Control When a financial calendar is created all the periods are set to Open'. You can change the status for each period by clicking a period in the grid and selecting either 'Closed' or 'Blocked' in the Period Status box for each module. Transactions cannot be posted to periods that are either blocked or closed. You can think of a blocked period as an interim status that prevents postings but can easily be opened if required by anyone who has access to the Financial Calendar form, say because a transaction was missed and needs to be posted to that period. A closed period is a more permanent status but it can also be opened if required. However only the 'ADMIN' user can open a closed period. When you run the Period End command in the Nominal Ledger you can choose to set the status for each module to 'Blocked' for the current period. When you run the Year End command you can choose to set the status for all periods in the financial year that you are closing to 'Closed'.

Box

Description

Year

The calendar's year. The years available depend on the financial years that have been set up. The year for the current financial year is entered on the Set Options form but its calendar is managed on the Financial Calendar form.

Year End Date

The last day of the financial year for the financial calendar.

Desc.

A description for the financial year which could be 'Financial Year 2010' if the year runs from January 2010 to December 2010 or perhaps 'April 2009 to March 2010' if the financial year starts and ends in different calendar years.

Start Date

The start date for the selected period. The date must be after the previous period's start date and before the start date for the first period of the next year's financial calendar.

Period Desc.

The 'friendly name' for the period. If there are 12 periods in the year a default description using the first three letters in each month's name followed by the year is provided. For example, 'Jan 2010', 'Feb 2010', 'Mar 2010', and so on. If there are more than 12 periods, the description is based on the period number. For example, 'Period 1', 'Period 2, 'Period 3' and so on. You can change the name if required.

Period Status

Each period in the financial calendar has a status for each module that updates the Nominal Ledger. The status controls whether transactions that were posted in the modules listed below is allowed to update the Nominal Ledger.

You can set periods to 'Open', 'Closed' or 'Blocked' for each of these modules:

Nominal Ledger (and Cashbook)
Sales Ledger (and Invoicing/Sales Order Processing)
Purchase Ledger (and Purchase Order Processing)
Stock Control

When a financial calendar is created all the periods are set to Open'. You can change the status for each period by clicking a period in the grid and selecting either 'Closed' or 'Blocked' in the Period Status box for each module.

Transactions cannot be posted to periods that are either blocked or closed. You can think of a blocked period as an interim status that prevents postings but can easily be opened if required by anyone who has access to the Financial Calendar form, say because a transaction was missed and needs to be posted to that period. A closed period is a more permanent status but it can also be opened if required. However only the 'ADMIN' user can open a closed period.

When you run the Period End command in the Nominal Ledger you can choose to set the status for each module to 'Blocked' for the current period. When you run the Year End command you can choose to set the status for all periods in the financial year that you are closing to 'Closed'.

You can use the Action menu to:

Create a calendar for the previous financial year if one does not already exist

Create calendars for up to three future financial years

Alter the number of periods in the selected financial year.

You can print the financial calendars that have been defined by clicking the

icon on the toolbar.