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 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

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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, because only posted transactions will be taken into consideration, and once the period is closed you will no longer be able to post 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 

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 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.

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 period
   4. A New Period is created
   5. The opening balance of all Accounts Receivable is calculated