Closing Accounting Periods

When a fiscal year is over, you must close the periods that comprise it.

To Close Accounting Periods:

  1. Open the Accounting Periods window.

  2. Click Close Year. If more than one fiscal year is open, the program assumes that the earliest one should be closed. It displays a message identifying the year it will close and explains the consequences of closing it.

  3. To close the year, click Yes.

Now the fiscal year is closed, and the program places a check mark in the Closed and Date Locked fields for all the periods in the year. Now the fiscal year cannot be opened again and you cannot remove the check mark from the Closed or Date Locked fields.

Note

You cannot close a fiscal year before you create a new one. Notice that when a fiscal year has been closed, you cannot change the starting date of the following fiscal year.

Even though a fiscal year has been closed, you can still post G/L entries to it. When you do this, the entries will be marked as posted to a closed fiscal year - the Prior-Year Entry field will contain a check mark.

After a fiscal year is closed, you must close the income statement accounts and transfer the year's results to an account in the balance sheet. And you can repeat it each time you post to the closed fiscal year.

Related Topics

About Year End Processes

Posting the Year End Closing Entry

Opening a New Fiscal Year



© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.