Period-End Closing Utility

Owned by Glen Thonis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 07, 2014 by Eric Metcalf (Unlicensed)
2 min read

The Period-End Closing Utility is used in OBeer to roll the P&L account balances into Retained Earnings.  This can be run at the end of each sub-period (month), but we recommend only running it once a year after all other year end closing tasks have been run.  The following are the steps to run this utility.

Step-by-step guide

  1.  Go to Administration>System Initialization>Posting Periods.    
    • The posting periods for which you are trying to run the utility must be set to either "Closing Period" or "Unlocked".  
    • If a posting periods is not set to one of those, you'll drill into the posting period, change the Period Status, and hit Update.  Setting the posting periods to "Closing Period" is the best practice. 
     
  2. Go to Administration>Utilities>Period-End Closing.
  3. Select the Period for which you want to run the Utility.  
    • In the "From" dropdown fields select the first month of the posting periods (e.g. 2014-01)  
    • In the "To" field, select the last month (e.g. 2014-12). 
    • If you are running this only for one month (not recommended) you would put the same month in both fields
     
  4. Select the Retained Earnings Account and the Period-End Closing Account.
  5. Choose the accounts that you would like to close out in the top-right section. You will generally want to select all of your P&L accounts.
  6. Click "Execute" to bring up the Period-End Closing window
  7. Fill in the Ref 1, Ref 2, and Remarks fields with any notes that you would like to include. The Due Date should be set to the last day of the previous Fiscal Year (e.g. 12/31/14) and the Document Date should be set to the first day of the new year (e.g. 1/1/15)
  8. Check the "Approved" box for all lines that you would like to post. You will usually want to select all of the lines that come up. Tip: You can click on the header of the column to check all of the boxes at once
  9. You can use the "Save" button to save your progress and come back to it later if needed. Once you are finished, click "Execute" to run the Period-End Closing
  10. The lines will be removed from the window as they are processed. If everything works correctly, all lines will now be blank.

It is a good idea to lock your Posting Periods after running this Utility so more postings cannot be made. You can do this by going to Administration>System Initialization>Posting Periods. You can then drill-in to each Period Code and change the Period Status to "Locked".