When the end of your accounting period has been reached, it is time to 'close the books'. By this time, all charges have been posted, payments have been received and deposited, and manual adjustments have been made.
Once an accounting period is closed, any accounting data in the closed period becomes 'locked' and cannot be changed. If you realize that a mistake was made in a previous accounting period, you can simply enter a manual adjustment into your current accounting period to correct the mistake. If you mistakenly closed the accounting period prematurely, you can reverse the close and reopen the accounting period. See the section on Rolling back an A/R accounting period.
Bookclose is the final event performed within an Accounting Period. The purpose of bookclose is to:
Reconcile all the Primary Guardian Payment Accounts to ensure accuracy
Perform final movement of funds between special accounts such as PREPAY to other Service Accounts such as 101-Tuition.
Calculate "Balance Forward' amounts for guardians with outstanding balances.
Post all Annual Enrollment fees for any students whose anniversary will occur during the next period. Note: This will only occur if you turned on this feature in the Enrollment Fee Rules.
Transfer any outstanding balances from those Guardians that are no longer designated as a Students "Primary Guardian" to the newly designated Primary Guardians account. NOTE: The actual change of primary guardians would have occurred sometime during the current period but the account is not closed until this time.
'Lock' accounting data for the closed period. This is particularly useful for corporate and franchised schools that need to report their revenue to a corporate office. With all schools on the same accounting periods, it will be easier for the corporate office to track revenue trends and receivables.
Officially mark current Accounting Period as "Closed" and open the next accounting period.
Before starting the bookclose process:
Verify all necessary manual transactions for this accounting period are complete
Verify all Payments received up to this point in time have been posted AND all these payments have been journalized to the subledger (this is done automatically for you unless you specifically requested NOT to have a payment journalized).
Confirm all necessary Posting Events for the period have been completed (e.g. Late Payment Process, Recurring Charge Process, etc.)
Once you are comfortable that all prerequisites for bookclose are met you can initiate the bookclose process. It is highly recommended that all other FrontDesk sessions be terminated while you are running the bookclose process from your PC (those running a multi-user network). If you have multiple users running FrontDesk, it is best to have everyone close out of FrontDesk until the Bookclose process completes.
It is also highly recommended that you take a backup of your database prior to bookclose, in the event that you want to restore your data before bookclose occurs.
You cannot 'undo' the bookclose process.
To initiate the bookclose process, select ACCOUNTING from the main menu then click on ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE, then CLOSE A/R ACCOUNTING PERIOD. Alternatively, you can click on the bookclose icon in the top toolbar
The bookclose process will take from one to several minutes depending on the size of your database.
For those schools using the SchoolLeader Back Office product, a summarized data file can be transmitted from your school to your corporate office database once the bookclose process has completed. This file can be transmitted automatically during the bookclose process, or manually by telling FrontDesk to transmit your data.
You MUST already be connected to the internet (or have a permanent "always on" connecton) to transmit your data to the Back Office server
Before starting the BackOffice upload process, ensure that you have properly set the Back Office Transmission Settings. Click on Tools, then Headquarters Communication, then HQ Transfer Settings.
Type in your database location. If you do not know the location then contact SchoolLeader support.
Click on the checkbox if you want to automatically transfer summaries to HQ during the bookclose process.
Click on OK.
Only authorized Back Office Users will be able to transmit data to the Back Office database.
Now that the communication definitions have been established, you can transmit your data to your corporate office.
If you want to transmit your data summaries to your headquarters database directly from the bookclose process:
establish your internet connection
initiate the bookclose process by clicking on the bookclose icon in the top toolbar or
Click on Accounting
Click on Accounts Receivable
Click on Close A/R Accounting Period
when bookclose has completed, you will receive a message asking if you now want to send your summary data to the corporate office. Click on OK if you want to send the data now. Click on CANCEL if you choose to send your data manually at a later time.
Once your HQ Transfer Settings have been defined, you will be able to manually transmit your data to the Back Office database. You do not control the data categories being transmitted, however you do need to specify the date range for the data. The data being transferred is controlled by your corporate office, and it can change on a week by week basis.
First establish your internet connection.
From FrontDesk Manager:
click on TOOLS
click on Headquarters Communication
click on Transmit Summaries to Headquarters
Once the connection is made to the database, click on the TRANSMIT button and your data will be transmitted to your corporate Back Office database. SchoolLeader will give you a message once the transmission has completed.