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, and manual adjustments have been completed.
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 up to this point in time have been posted AND all these payments have been Journalized to the A/P Subledger.
Confirm all necessary Posting Events for the period have been completed (e.g.; Posting new Bills, Making Payments, etc).
Calculate "Balance Forward' amounts for vendor with outstanding balances (you still owe them money)
'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).
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 Accounts Payable
Click on Close A/P Accounting Period
The bookclose process should take no more than 60 seconds depending on the size of your database.