Period End

You can only use the Period End command once per financial period to close the period and be ready for the next period. In the final period of the financial year you run the Period End command before the Year End command.

At the end of each accounting period, you use the Period End command to perform the following actions:

• For balance forward accounts (those with the Open Item option cleared on the General tab of the Nominal Accounts form), each transaction in the period is consolidated into a brought-forward balance transaction if the Compress Transactions box is ticked. This box is ticked automatically if this is the final period in the financial year because the transactions have to be consolidated and posted to the new financial year. You cannot untick the box in the final period.

• Remove records from the files that are marked for deletion, including accounts, cost centres, journal documents, matrix reports and so on.

• Remove from the files recurring documents which have been posted in full.

• Remove from the files journals for which the Retained option is cleared on the General tab of the Nominal Journals form, for which at least one posting has been made.

• For reversing journals, create journal entries in the new period which are the reverse of those made in the closing period.

• Update the Current Period box on the Nominal Ledger - Set Options form.

• Unless the Nominal Ledger is in the final period, journals are posted into the next period for transactions from other modules(Sales ledger, Purchase Ledger, Cashbook, Stock and Payroll modules) that have not yet been transferred to the Nominal Ledger. If untransferred transactions are found that are dated in the current Nominal Ledger Period, or fall in earlier Nominal Periods, the following message is displayed:

The Period End has found untransferred transactions dated prior to the end of this period from these modules: ... Do you want to post the transactions to the next period? Click No to quit the Period End and post the transactions to this period using the respective Nominal Ledger Transfer commands.

Important: Untransferred transactions from other modules are posted into the next Nominal period by the Period End if the transaction date falls either before the current nominal period or in the new period. If you do not want these transactions to be posted into the new period, you must run the respective Transfer command on the Nominal Utilities menu to transfer them into the current period before running the Period End.

Open Period Accounting

If you use the Open Period Accounting feature, you can block the period you are closing to prevent any further transactions being posted to that period. If you tick the Nominal box to block it, all the other modules are blocked as well. However, if the Nominal Ledger is not blocked you can decide to block any of these modules on an individual basis:

• Sales Ledger

• Purchase Ledger

• Stock Control

The following happens in the new period after the Period End is run:

• The period status on the Financial Calendar form for the Nominal Ledger, Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, and Stock Control modules is set to 'Open'. You can change the status to 'Blocked' for any module other than the Nominal Ledger after the Period End process is completed.

• The Year To Date and Period To Date balances are updated for every Nominal Ledger account that had transactions posted in advance to the new period because they become current transactions.  For example, if in period 1 a posting was made to period 3, when the Period End is run at the end of Period 2, the transaction becomes current, and the balances are updated.