PURPOSE:
This documentation will guide users through the information required in order to successfully go through the Year End procedure for Sage Pastel Partner or Xpress software.
SCOPE:
The year-end procedure itself is fully automated, and prepares your company for processing in the new financial year. During the procedure relevant account balances, budgets and transactions are transferred, date parameters changed, and so on.
Unlike many other accounting systems, you can still post adjustments and accruals to the previous year once you have run the year-end procedure. In effect, running the year-end is therefore not time critical, in that you can still run your year-end without waiting for all financial transactions to be done.
However, you cannot process customer sales documents and supplier purchases documents to the previous financial year. You must therefore ensure that you have processed all customer and supplier documents for the current year before running the year-end procedure. Journal and cashbook transactions/adjustments can be left for after the year-end.
Before performing the year end procedure, please take the time to read all instructions below so that the year end process can go through as smoothly as possible.
CRITICAL NOTES:
Before the Year End Procedure, you need to be aware of the following:
- Backup - Ensure you have made at least 2 working backups of your company data - to different locations. (DO NOT skip this step)!
- Data Integrity - Perform a Data Integrity (verify data only) check prior to running year end to ensure your data is free from errors. Further details below.
- Periods - Do not change the dates of your current year periods to next year. The year-end procedure does this for you.
- Period 13 - You can use period 13 to post next year transactions, and thereby delay the year-end procedure for up to a month at most. (Please note that period 13 is not available in Sage Pastel Xpress).
- Supervisor Access - You have sole access to your company data and are logged into Partner as a supervisor
- Retained Income Account - This account exists in your General Ledger.
- No Open Batches Exist - Documents 'on hold' for users who have multiple period access are not considered to be open. You must update all open batches before running the year-end procedure. However sales, purchase orders and quotations processed before the year-end procedure are carried over to the next year.
- Last Period Processing - You have processed transaction into last period of the current financial year. If there are no transactions in the last period of the current financial year, Pastel warns you of this fact, since in all probability you should not want to run the year-end. However, you can continue if you wish to.
PLEASE also view our document on what to check first before running the year end process for more detailed information in regards to this - Click Here!
IMPORTANT NOTE:
It is very difficult to predict how long the year process may take to completed as a number of variables such as, size of the data, PC hardware specifications as well as available system resources will impact on the duration of the process.
A common occurrence that tends to happen during the Year End process is that the system appears to hang when processing the acctrn.dat (transactions), acchisth.dat (history header), acchistl.dat (history lines) files. Please understand that these files are often very large and although the system seems to be not responding it is actually processing away as intended.
It is absolutely vital that you are patient during this process as shutting Partner down forcefully (i.e. by using ctrl-alt-del) will almost certainly corrupt your company data files.
PREPARING FOR YEAR END CHECKLIST:
It is absolutely imperative that you prepare thoroughly before you process the year-end. The following checklist will help to ensure that you have done all the necessary preparatory work.
| Task |
Details |
| Update Open Batches |
You cannot process the year-end if you have open batches in your company data. (To determine whether you have any open batches simply click on View….Open batches from within Partner). Note, however, that invoices on hold, outstanding sales orders, purchase orders and quotations will not prevent the year-end from running. |
| Backup Your Company |
We cannot overstate the importance of this step. You should keep this backup and never overwrite it. As a precautionary measure, make at least two sets of backups and store them in different physical locations. If the year-end procedure does not complete for any reason you will have to restore from backup and reinitiate the year-end procedure. It is also recommended that you run a data integrity before making this backup. |
| Copy the Company to a New Company |
This step is optional, but highly recommended. If you have enough disk space, you can create a new company as a copy of your company prior to the year-end. This is useful because you can continue to do queries on transactions and balances, which are more than two years old. If you decide to do this, we suggest that you change the password(s) on the copied company to prevent you from inadvertently posting entries into that company. Note that this procedure is not sufficient as a backup – if your hard disk fails you will loose the data of both companies. You can do this within the Year-end Assistant. |
| Make Printouts |
We recommend that you make at least the following printouts before running the year end:
- Trial Balance for the year
- Balance Sheet for the year
- Detailed ledger for all accounts and all periods
- Customer and supplier age analysis reports
- Any other reports you deem necessary |
| Create a Retained Income Account |
If this is the first time you are running a year end, ensure that you have created a retained income GL account. The system posts the profit or loss for the year to this account.
Steps to ensure that the Retained Income account is created/setup correctly:
- Search for the Retained Income account.
- If it exists, ensure iis allocated to: B15 - Retained Income Balance Sheet Financial Category
- If not, create the account and ensure its allocated to the Retained Income Financial Category
- Once you have finished creating the account, click save. |
| Foreign Currency Revaluation |
If you use the Multi-Currency add-on module, you must run a foreign currency revaluation prior to running the year-end. |
| Disk Space and Memory |
It is important to check that the available disk space is sufficient to run the year-end. There should be at least disk space available equal to the size of your data directory. Furthermore, please ensure that the available conventional memory (i.e. the “Largest Executable Program Size”) is 585K.
How do I check on my computer what my free memory is?
- Go into your MS DOS prompt and simply type in MEM and press Enter.
- Locate the area Largest Executable Program Size (3rd line from bottom)
- Ensure this setting states at least 585k.
- If it is less, then you may experience problems such as memory errors or hanging problem |
| Processing Inventory Count |
One of the routines you usually perform before the year-end procedure, is a stock count. It is not necessary to complete all the options in the inventory count assistant before running the year-end. If you perform a snapshot before the year-end, you can always complete it after running the year-end. You can adjust stock quantities in the last period of last year via inventory journals. |
| Preserving Budgets at Year End |
Budgets are transferred to the correct year automatically during the year-end procedure. Please refer to the section “what the year-end procedure does” for further details on exactly how the processing is done.
If you want the current budget values before the year-end to remain as the current budgets after the year-end, copy the values for this year's budget to next year's before running the year-end procedure. This is done through the Edit…. Budgets menu. |
| Unmatched Payments |
When you process to open item accounts you allocate payments and receipts to original invoices. After you have run the year-end you will be able to allocate payments/receipts to the previous year's outstanding invoices. |
WHAT RUNNING THE YEAR END PROCEDURE DOES:
The year-end procedure automatically sets up the company for processing in the next year. During this procedure the following processing is done:
| Process |
Explanation |
| Updates General Ledger Balances |
For income statement accounts, current year balances move to last year. For balance sheet accounts, last year balances consolidate as one total, and the current balances move to last year. Current year balances are set to zero. Current budgets move to last year budgets, future budgets move to current budgets, and next year budgets become zero. The system posts the profit or loss for the year into the retained income account. |
| Updates Customer and Supplier Balances |
Last year balances are consolidated into one total, this year balances move to last year and last year's closing balances are transferred to this year as opening balances. This year balances and sales / purchases values become zero. |
| General Ledger, Customer, and Supplier Transactions |
The system deletes last year transactions. This year transactions become last year transactions, and the system creates a new, empty transaction file for the current year. Invoices on hold have their period set to period one. |
| Updates Inventory Costs, Sales, and Quantity Values |
Closing stock quantities become opening stock quantities in the New Year. The respective costs of these items are also carried forward. |
| Periods |
The years are incremented by one year in the period table, and period end dates are adjusted if necessary, for example, for leap years. The current period for single period users is set to one. |
| Moves Period 13 |
If you set period 13 as the first period of the new year, the system transfers period 13 transactions and balances to period one of the new year. |
| Invoice History and Open Item History |
Invoice history and open item history are not deleted by the year-end procedure. To delete these you must run the Delete History / Clear Files function. |
PROCEDURE:
1.) Running the Year End Procedure:
- In Sage Pastel Partner click on the Change.. Year End menu option. When prompted for a password simply type in your supervisor password and click on 'OK'
- The Year End Assistant will display on screen providing you with the option to create a backup. If you have not already done so please click on the 'Backup' option to create a backup. Otherwise, click on the 'Next' option to continue if you already have a backup.
- The assistant will then prompt you to optionally copy your company to another company. As stated previously it is highly recommended that you use this function.
- Please be aware that this does NOT replace the need to do a backup.
- If you have chosen to copy the company, please specify a name for the new company and tick the option to 'Run the Year End in the new company' option
- If you have chosen the option to create a copy company you will be prompted to change the password of you original company so that you do not inadvertently post transactions to the incorrect company in future. After acknowledging the message click on 'OK' to continue.
- The Assistant reminds you of the minimum reports you should run. However, you cannot produce these reports here. If you still need to produce some reports, cancel the Assistant, run the relevant reports, and then return to the Assistant. After acknowledging the message click on 'Next' to continue.
- The assistant then reminds you what exactly the Year End procedure does. To proceed further click on the 'Next' option.
- Finally you are prompted with a confirmation message before the system performs the procedure. At this point click on the 'Process' option to run the Year End procedure.
- Once the system has completed the Year End process successfully, a "Year End Complete" message will appear. Simply click on 'Ok' to continue and then 'Finish' to close the Year End Assistant. If you do not receive confirmation that process has completed successfully, please restore from a backup and run the Year Procedure again.
- Once the Year End Assistant is closed, Partner will log you into you company data. To ensure your company data is setup for the current financial year, within Sage Pastel Partner click on Setup..Periods and verify that the period dates are correct.
- It is strongly recommended that at this time you run another data integrity check. To run a data integrity check you will need to be logged in as a Supervisor and have sole access to your data. To initiate this process simply:
- Click on File..Data Integrity.
- If you have not already made a backup please do so before proceeding. If you do have a current backup then please click on 'Next' to continue.
- Ensure the 'Verify Data Only' option is ticked and then click on the 'Process' button
- If errors are revealed by the Data Integrity, please report these to us by emailing support and attaching the error report to support@sagepastelsoftware.com.au or fax this to 1300 130 532
2.) Processing Last Year Transactions After the Year End:
As mentioned earlier in this documentation, you will be able to create transaction or make adjustments for the previous year, but you will not be able to create Customer or Supplier documents for the previous year. To process a Journal entry for last year you'll need to do the following:
- Go to the relevant cashbook/journal.
- Click on Settings button (bottom right hand corner).
- By checking/un-checking the 'this year transaction' option you will be able to switch between this year and last year processing. Last year will be displayed in red at the bottom of screen. However this year and last year transactions cannot be posted in the same batch and the option to last year or this year will be grayed out if a batch already exists.
If you require further assistance or information, please contact our support department. If you do not have a support contract, please contact sales@sagepastelsoftware.com.au
