Specifications

Computer Tutorial 3 Lesson 7  11
TOPIC 7.6
Starting a new fiscal year
When the recommended year-end procedures are almost complete and you are ready to start
entering transactions for a new fiscal year, there are two major steps to take:
1. Create a new fiscal year.
2. Perform period-end maintenance.
Create a new fiscal year
Creating a new fiscal year is similar to closing the books in a manual general ledger. Accpac
creates a batch that adds or subtracts the balance of each income statement account to or from
the Retained earnings account and sets each income statement to zero. Accpac then posts the
batch automatically and a posting journal is created as part of this procedure.
Specifically, Accpac creates a set of all active accounts in the new fiscal year. It also ―rolls
forward‖ the account balances so that opening balances are established to be identical to all
closing balances in the previous fiscal year (for balance sheet accounts only). In the case of
revenue, expense, gain, and loss accounts, the opening balances are established as zero.
Before running the Create New Year function, you need to set up a new fiscal year in the
Fiscal Calendar icon under Common Services. Click the New button, then click Add to save
your changes.
Perform period-end maintenance
It is advisable to perform period-end maintenance to save disk space. This clears obsolete
data by deleting inactive accounts, transaction detail history, fiscal set history, and resetting
batch numbers.
Consolidate posted transactions
In the General Ledger module, you can consolidate posted transactions. You would normally
consolidate a period when you no longer need the detailed transaction information.
Consolidating a period creates a single posted summary amount for each account carried
forward to the next period. Consolidating is optional. If you wish to continue to access the
detailed transactions, you should not consolidate. You should always print financial
statements and a trial balance before and immediately after consolidating a period. You
should also always back up your data prior to doing a consolidation.
Clear history
This option clears printed posting journals and clears deleted posted batches.
TOPIC 7.7
Internal controls
The general ledger contains financial information critical to a company’s operations. Many
companies keep their financial information confidential. There are many reasons for that. A
company may have concerns that a competitor could benefit from having operating cost
information. Insider trading can be a problem when someone gets access to information
before it is public. Therefore, internal controls play a major role in protecting this
information.