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Evo-ERP and DBA Classic >> Accounting >> What happens in this system during Year-End?
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Message started by celesco corp on 01/02/08 at 11:38:56

Title: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by celesco corp on 01/02/08 at 11:38:56

I am using EVO at a Company with a December year-end. In trying to post transactions today and I have been given a message that AM B must be performed, which is very foreign to me as in other systems (MAS90/ACCPAC-SBT), I can close the GL anytime (months?) I am ready after year-end. Now this routine is asking for this on the first day of the new year!

I am foreseeing a nightmare until my year-end processing is done later this month so I would like some sort of explanation of what this process entails to calm or heighten my fears.

I will mention that it would be nice if the search function worked better as I am sure this posting is not the first for info on the year-end process.

TIA, Rich

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by cathyh on 01/02/08 at 13:16:15

You do not have to do year end routine on the first day of the new year- you just can't post any transactions for 2008 until you do. We typically wait until the majority of past year transactions are done- ie inventory, work orders, AR and AP, because once the year end is done each transaction for the past year does an additional transaction to adjust retained earnings. We like to keep these to a minimum. After about a week we usually are needing to post to 2008, so we do the year end routine.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by David Waldmann on 01/02/08 at 14:35:43

From a net effect point of view, AM-B only does one thing - it prevents entering any transactions to the PREVIOUS year. That is, before running it you can enter transactions for 2006, and once you run it your open period changes to 1/1/07 - 12/31/08. At least on previous versions. I believe that the newest/er releases of ISTech DBA will allow entries for up to 6 years, but maybe it's only access to data for 6 years.

Anyways, the bottom line is that for all practical purposes it doesn't really do anything.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by Lynn_Pantic on 01/02/08 at 19:09:55

Let's set the record straight. AM-B does not CLOSE anything. It simply rolls balances forward and opens the new year. You can continue to post to the prior year for as long as it takes to wrap things up. And even if you haven't run AM-B yet, no day to day processing is impacted other than GL-O Posting (because it needs to know the new year period dates before posting can occur.)

Once you do have the majority of entries made for the prior year, you can use AM-A to set the close date to prevent any type of entry to the prior period. When the inevitable adjusting, depreciation, and other entries are required, simply use AM-A to open the prior period be setting the close date back, make the entries, then set the close date again to prevent other entries.

Any entries made to an income or expense account for a prior period (up to 6 years past if the Close Date allows it) will atomatically make an entry closing out the account to Retained Earnings.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by lmk223a on 01/04/08 at 14:14:19

:) I concur with Lynn.

The value to running AM-B on the first working day is that it allows me to process January daily batch transactions (i.e. posting sales invoices, cash receipts and disbursements) even though December 2007 is not yet finished. I use AM-A to set the period back to 12/31 when I need to enter December adjustments or create December journal entries.

The advantages of not allowing others to post prior year transactions far exceed the minor encumbrance of setting back the date in AM-A to process December transactions.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by celesco corp on 01/07/08 at 18:41:05

I am now a little confused...Lynn said that AM-B doesn't close anything, but David and Imk223a both say you need to reopen December to post anything to December. I need to see January activity in the GL and I also need to do some serious work to close out the year. I really can't see changing the closing date any time I need to do something in December.

Lynn, could you please clarify this? Am I correct in assuming that processing AM-B does not require opening and closing December to complete year-end transactions as well as see what is happening in January GL?

Thanks,

Rich

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by Lynn_Pantic on 01/07/08 at 21:11:55

AM-A is the program to control whether a period is open or closed. Not AM-B. You run AM-B to open up the new period and then use AM-A to control whether or not prior period entries can be posted. If you have a lot of December activity to process, leave AM-A as 12/01/07 until you are finished with December.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by David Waldmann on 01/08/08 at 06:41:04

I wasn't talking about AM-A at all. But since we are now, our default is to have two months "open" via AM-A. That is, right now AM-A is set to Nov 30. At the end of January I will change it to Dec 31. As we are finalizing our tax return we may temporarily need to re-set it to go back even further. Once our tax return has been filed I will make a copy of our company called "Final 2007" with a company code of "07" for archival purposes, and never make another entry before 1/1/08. However, I could theoretically go back as far as 2002 and make entries if I wanted to. Of course then I would probably have to file an amended return as well...

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by Lynn_Pantic on 01/08/08 at 08:24:27

Technically, AM-A should be set to day 1 of the open period, not the last day of the prior period. If you set it to 12/31/07 then entries dated 12/31/07 WILL be allowed.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by David Waldmann on 01/08/08 at 09:58:51

Lynn_Pantic wrote:

If you set it to 12/31/07 then entries dated 12/31/07 WILL be allowed.

And that's what I want. I always use the last day of the month, because that's the date I use for "month" type things, like depreciation, adjustments, accruals, etc. Using the last day rather than the first day limits the possibility of someone accidentally entering a transaction to the wrong month to only that one day.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by Dawn on 01/11/08 at 11:10:49

Note of caution.

My income account on freight went wonky because of the YE close. I had to invoice for freight that happened in December and I did it after running AM-B. It put the YE balance of 75k of that COGS account in as a debit and 75k as a credit into my income account but it does not show on the AR statement. Yet on the actual invoice freight was stated as 180.00 which is what it should have been. Even wonkier was that the 180 was in the income account as well as the AR statement. I did a GL entry to fix it but I have never seen that before.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by cathyh on 01/11/08 at 11:19:12

We have seen some pretty crazy stuff in the past when posting to the GL for the past year-- which is why we try to wait until there is a minimum of activity left before doing the year end routine.
One thing we pinpointed but could not necessarily repeat was errors when we posted more than one "TYPE" of transaction at a time-- now we are very paranoid and not only post just one type at at time but also exit out of GL-P in between types, and definitely do not post a date range that includes old and new year.

Title: Re: What happens in this system during Year-End?
Post by Lynn_Pantic on 01/16/08 at 18:59:42

The bug that Cathy reports (posting multiple types of prior year entries in one GL-O session messing up RE) has been indentified and fixed with IS Tech updates (maybe in late 2006, it has been a while). I have not ever heard of what Dawn is reporting and would be interested in getting more details.