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End Period Wizard The End Period Wizard will assist you in closing the financial period in your general ledger so that you can print your financial reports. The procedure is quick, simple and almost completely automatic. A period is never permanently closed in CAPITAL GL Controller, so you can re-run the End Period Wizard multiple times if you need to. However, it is recommended that you only run the End Period Wizard when you have finished with all changes and adjustments to your records in CAPITAL Office. There is no need to use the End Period Wizard if you directly post automatic system batches. The End Period Wizard is, however, the recommended means by which a period should be closed. What the Wizard Does The End Period Wizard performs the following tasks:
Before you can begin to use the Wizard you will need to tell it which account code in your chart of accounts refers to your stock on hand (inventory value) account. You can specify this account code by doing the following: 1. Go to Files|Properties in order to open the Installation Options dialog box. 2. Click on the Account tab. 3. In the field: Stock On
Hand Account enter your general ledger chart of accounts
inventory account code. You can also click on 4. Click on OK. You are now ready to use the Wizard! Panel 1 - Selecting The Period to End The End Period Wizard will automatically suggest which period needs to be closed next. If it selects the wrong period, simply select the correct period from the list. The Wizard scans your previous general ledger postings to determine which period has not yet been finalised. (It looks for what are called "posted system batches". The next accounting period that does not have any of these is selected. A system batch contains the transaction data moved from CAPITAL Office.) You may decide to select a different period - perhaps redo a previous period - if you wish. The End Period Wizard will allow you to end a period that has already been ended. However, this will take longer to perform because it must undo the previous ending first. Panel 2 - Closing Your Stock If you have opening and closing stock accounts in your general ledger's chart of accounts, the End Period Wizard will detect them and prompt you to enter your stock value at the end of the period you are going to close. Ideally, this information is available on the Stock Quantity Report you ran from CAPITAL Office at the end of that period.
To create a Stock Quantities Report at the end of each period do the following: 1. Start CAPITAL Office and from the main menu select Section|Reports... 2. The Stock Control Section should be selected. If it isn't, click on the Stock Control entry under the Section list. 3. Double-click on the report Stock Quantities: Standard for a fully itemized report (this is report number 101 on the list), or Stock Quantities: Overview by Location/Group (this is report number 105 on the list) for a summarised version.
Estimating Stock Value If You Don't Have a Stock Report While it always better to obtain this information from a Stock Quantities Report, if you don't have such a report available, you can estimate it by following this procedure: 1. Run one of the Stock Quantity Report as described above, for the current date. 2. Run a sales report and add back the cost of sales since the beginning of the period that follows the one you are now closing. 3. Similarly, subtract the amount added to your stock purchases account for the same period. Other issues may make the above estimate less accurate: such as inventory writeoffs and adjustments that were made to the system which did no go through either your sale or purchase transaction systems. However, under normal circumstances the above procedure should give you a reasonable estimate. Panel 3 - End The Period When you click on the Finished button on this panel, the End Period Wizard will begin. It will transfer your accounting data from CAPITAL Office and attempt to update your balances in your general ledger. When it is finished you will be ready to print your financial reports. During this process the Wizard may determine that it will need to create various automatic journal adjustments to your system. You can inspect what these adjustments will be by clicking on the Journals button. For more information on what this information means, see the section titled Automatic Journals below. If the Wizard detects any problems during the transfer and update process it will report them on-screen. Note the transaction's origin and transaction number. You will need to go into CAPITAL Office and correct the problem, and then re-run the Wizard.
Automatic Journals The End Period Wizard will create two sets of journals automatically if it determines that they are required. These are: 1. Opening & Closing Stock Journals The Wizard will create these journals if it detects opening and closing stock accounts in your chart of accounts. If these do not exist - because you are running a direct cost of sales chart of accounts - the Wizard will not create the journals nor prompt you to enter a closing stock value. For Period 1 the Wizard derives the opening stock value from your stock on hand balance sheet account. After period 1 is ended, the Wizard derives the opening stock balance from the previous period's closing stock balance. For more information on what this journal actually is see: The Stock Journal. 2. GST Reconciliation Journals The Wizard will create these journal entries if it detects GST Input Clearing and GST Sales/Payables accounts specified in your CAPITAL Office installation settings. If either account code is not specified (left blank) then no journals are created. It is important to note that when you click on the Journals button the actual values that will be assigned to these accounts are left blank. This is because the Wizard cannot determine what these values will be until after the accounting data from CAPITAL Office has been transferred into the general ledger. For more information on what this journal actually is see: GST Reconciliation. Running the Wizard Again In the Same Period You may run the Wizard as many times as you like in the same period. Any period in CAPITAL that has been ended can be reversed and done again. (However, after you close a financial year some limitations do apply.) Nonetheless, it is recommended that you try to end the period only once if you can. If you end a period multiple times, CAPITAL GL Controller must reverse any postings already made to your general ledger. All changes made to your general ledger, whether normal postings or reversals, get recorded in the audit trail. It can be tedious to hunt through or print the audit trail if it is full of reversal entries. Automatic System Batches If you have set-up CAPITAL Office to automatically generate system batches during transaction processing, the End Period Wizard will delete these during the close off procedure. This is done to ensure that users do not accidently post these extra batches later on. (This would result in a doubling up of journal entries.)
Limitations of the Wizard It was the intended design of the End Period Wizard to keep things simple for the user. With that objective in mind the following limitations should be noted: You cannot perform multiple company consolidations using the Wizard. You will need to use the Make New System Batch Utility for that purpose. The Wizard assumes you have only one stock on hand account per general ledger. General journal postings are not reversed by the Wizard. If you are posting general journals in addition to those made by the Wizard, you should always manually reverse these before you re-run the Wizard. The Wizard will not perform automatic GST Reconciliations for versions of CAPITAL prior to release 2.7. (These earlier versions of CAPITAL did not support GST.) If you must post additional general journals, always do these after the End Period Wizard has been run. |
to view your chart of accounts.
It is important to note that you cannot re-run a
Stock Quantities Report for a prior date. The information on this
report always refers to the present date. Therefore it should be
run at the necessary time.
Unless you
specifically need to exclude certain groupings from your report,
sort the report by Product to ensure that all product items (and
their values) appear on the report.