What do I do before creating my new year in General Ledger?

Melanie Courtney

Creating a new year in General Ledger will create and post a batch to take the revenue and expense accounts (designated as Income Statement Type of accounts) to a $0.00 balance for the beginning of the next fiscal year.  All of the details will remain in the previous year history file.

Before performing this function you should:

  1. Backup your data
  2. Run a data integrity check on all modules.  Print and keep the report.
  3. Print a chart of accounts and verify that you have at least 1 account designated as a retained earnings or closing account.  You must have at least 1 account that is account type “R” for Retained Earnings before you can create the new year.
  4. In your printed chart of accounts, verify that all accounts that are revenue and/or expense type of accounts have been designated as “Income Statement” type of accounts.  Accounts that are mistakenly defined as balance sheet accounts will have their balance carried forward to the next year.
  5. If you have more than 1 retained earnings account, and you have departments that close to different retained earnings accounts, make sure the correct closing account is specified for each department in the segment codes in GLSetup.
  6. Related to #5 above, for each Income Statement type of account in General Ledger, make sure there is a value in the Close To field for each account.  This value is usually defined as either department or program.  You will have a pull down list available to select from.  Without this specified at the account level, the account will close to the default retained earnings account defined in GL Options.