14.3 Final Close of Accounting Period

Final closings must be done in consecutive order. In other words, if the last period closed was period 2, the next period closed must be period 3. The system does not allow periods to be skipped. When the Final Close process is run for the first time, the following prompt is displayed:

Is this the first period to be closed for this set of books?

Enter a y or yes and press the RETURN key. If periods are closed in consecutive order, this prompt is never redisplayed. If a period is closed out of order this prompt is displayed once again. In this case, enter n or no and press the RETURN key. An error message is displayed, and the process terminates. If accounting periods are not closed in consecutive order the general ledger balances will not be correct.

When a Final Close is started, a parameter screen is displayed that requests a year, period, and Retained Earnings account. The values entered for year and period should be the accounting year, and the accounting period within that year. The Retained Earnings account value should be the General Ledger account number for Retained Earnings (or possibly, Year to Date Earnings). In the following example a Final Close is run for the third period of 1983. The number of the Retained Earnings account in this example is 701.

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After the STORE button <F5> is selected the system displays the following messages as it runs the final close process.

Re-running Trial Close

Recosting Inventory

Processing Payroll

Processing Cash Receipts

Processing General Journal

Processing Accounts Payable Journal

Processing Accounts Receivable Sales Journal

Processing Fixed Assets Depreciation Journal

Processing Inventory Adjustments Journal

Processing Work in Process Journal

Posting to General Ledger

Updating Inventory History

Making Final Closing Entries

Period 3 in 1983 is closed

As in the Trial Close process, systems not having all of the C/Books modules installed may not display all of the "Processing ..." messages. Pressing the RETURN key redisplays the Main Menu.