Navigating to Accounting Periods

Using Accounting Periods

An Accounting Period is defined as the time frame in which financial transactions are posted. An accounting period in CRM.COM can cover either a month or a year, according to how it is set up in Accounting Period Settings and it can be either open or closed, but only one Accounting Period can be opened open at a time and it will always be the latest one. 

The first Accounting Period is automatically created by the system on setting up Accounting Period Settings while the rest of the Accounting Periods are created once the current accounting period is closed (via Closing Period process). Once an Accounting Period is closed it cannot be reopened and thus no more Financial Transactions can be posted against that period, because Financial Transactions can only be posted against open/current Accounting Periods and they can only be related with a single Accounting Period. 

Before closing the period you have the option to find all financial transactions that have been created within the time frame of the open period and if you wish, you can have them posted so that they will be included in the period you are about to close. This is done via the Accounting Period Posting process

In addition a utility, to identify erroneous data (financial transactions and accounts receivable) and correct them, is available and it can be executed before the closing period process as if any errors are found during the actual closing the process will not proceed. 

The Accounting Period is also responsible for Accounts Receivable Balance calculation as the closing of an Accounting Period will calculate the account's Opening Balance which is used in the balance calculation. 

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Accounting Periods Validations & Restrictions

Action	Restrictions	Validations	Additional Information
Create	Mandatory Configuration Entities must be configured before you start using Accounting Periods.Check out Accounting Periods - Configuration RequirementsPeriod Settings		1st Accounting Period is created on setting up the Accounting Period Settings Rest Accounting Periods are created sequentially on closing the current Accounting Period
Close	You can only close Open Accounting Periods	Validate that  Accounting Period Settings  are defined In cases in which no Accounting Period Settings exist, then the process cannot be initiated. Validate existing Accounting Periods There is at least one Accounting Period registered in the system and it is in open life cycle state. The process cannot be performed for already closed accounting periods. The open Accounting Period's end date is in the past compared to the process run's performed date.	The process will be executed by the scheduler but it can only be executed directly or scheduled for the future. It cannot be scheduled to be executed repeatedly Terminated accounts receivable will also be considered during the process run too but only as long as posted financial transactions were submitted against these accounts receivable and the financial transactions are not yet related to any Accounting Period. This means that these financial transactions might had been submitted against the accounts receivable prior its termination but the financial transactions will still have to be related to an accounting period. Error Log is available to keep all the Accounts Receivable or Financial Transactions that could not be processed
Modify	You cannot modify an Accounting Period
Open	You cannot reopen a Closed Accounting Period
Delete	You cannot delete an Accounting Period

 

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Accounting Periods Attributes

Fields followed by an * means that they are mandatory

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 Posting Financial Transactions to include in Current Period

Before closing a period you will need to ensure that all financial transactions that should be included in the period are already posted, as because only posted transactions will be taken into consideration, and once the period is closed then you will no longer be able to post them any transactions against that period.

Via the Accounting Period screen, of an open period you can find all the related Draft Financial Transactions that have been created within the time frame of the specific period, select the ones you want to include and post them

1. Navigate to the Accounting Period screen
2. Search for the Open Period and go to its data entry screen
3. Go to the Draft Transactions Section
   All the eligible transactions will be available
4. Select the ones you want to include by placing a check in their related checkbox
5. Click on Actions > Post from the Actions menu

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Correcting data before closing an Accounting Period 

The process of performing an Once all the transactions to be included in the period are posted you can  then perform a check on the correctness of the financial transactions and accounts receivable, which will be taken into consideration by the closing process. This is achieved by the Accounting Period's Closing Validation Process which is responsible for retrieving and fixing erroneous information that affect an Accounting Period's Closing process. This erroneous information might be related to either Financial Transactions and /or Accounts Receivable and can be found in the table below.

It is not mandatory to execute the process before closing a period, however, on closing the period if any errors are identified, the system will not be able to proceed and you will be requested to execute the Correction process unless Accounting Period's Closing Validation Process is explicitly executed.

1. Navigate to the Accounting Period screen
2. Search for the Open Period and go to its data entry screen
3. Click on Actions > Period Closing Corrections from the Actions menu
   The process will be executed and you will be notified once completed so you can proceed to the closing of the period 
   

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Accounting Period's Closing Validation Process

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Closing an Accounting Period 

Given that Financial Transactions and Accounts Receivable are correct then you can proceed with closing the Accounting Period

On the closing of an Accounting Period the following actions are taken.

1. Navigate to the Accounting Period screen
2. Search for the Open Period and go to its data entry screen
3. Click on Actions > Close Period from the Actions menu
   1. From the modal select whether you would like to execute the process now or schedule it for some time in the future
   2. Click on Submit
   Once the process is submitted to the scheduler it will start running at the scheduled time. 
4. When the process is completed:
   1. Accounting Period Totals tab is populated with the respective figures
   2. Current Period is closed
   3. The period is copied on all Financial Transactions posted within this

1. 1. period

1. 1. A New Period is created
   2. The opening balance of all Accounts Receivable is calculated