When the end of your accounting period has been reached, it is time to 'close the books'. By this time, all bills have been posted, payments have been made, revenue received, and manual adjustments have been completed.
When you close the current General Ledger accounting period, SchoolLeader will automatically import the corresponding data from the subledgers and incorporate it properly into the balance sheets and Income statements based on your prior Chart Of Account definitions. As a result, you must have already finalized and closed the corresponding Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable periods (i.e. subledger periods that correspond to the same date ranges in the G/L Period). If these corresponding A/R and A/P periods have not been finalized and closed already, SchoolLeader will not allow you to close the General Ledger.
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, simply enter a manual adjustment into your current accounting period.
Bookclose is the final event performed within an Accounting Period. The purpose of bookclose is to:
Verify all necessary manual transactions for this accounting period are complete
Verify all payments made and payments received up to this point have been posted, AND all these payments have been Journalized to the A/R and A/P subledgers.
Confirm all necessary Posting Events for the period have been completed (e.g.; Posting new Bills, Making Payments, Receiving Payments, etc).
Calculate "Balance Forward' amounts by subaccount.
'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 made and 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).
Ensure that your A/R and A/P accounting periods that coincide with the G/L accounting period have been closed.
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.
To initiate the bookclose process, click on the bookclose icon in the top toolbar or
Click on Accounting
Click on General Ledger
Click on Close G/L Accounting Period
The bookclose process should take no more than 60 seconds depending on the size of your database.