Fiscal Year Beginning Balances

This section provides information on the processes used to prepare the General Ledger for the beginning of a new fiscal year. Users should be familiar with the Recurring Calculations function before continuing. Prior to preparing for the year-end process, it should be determined how beginning balance will be calculated from the prior year ending balances. Usually no closing entries are required at the end of the fiscal year. The Recurring Calculations model for Balance Forward entries will need to be defined to create a Journal Entry of beginning balances to be posted to the first day of the new fiscal year.

Beginning new year balances are calculated through the use of a Recurrent Calculations (RC) which will analyze all of the prior year transactions and create an entry summarizing them at whatever level is specified in the calculation. These entries may be posted from the individual detail transaction level to any control total level. Depending on district requirements any subset of the General Ledger may be closed concurrently with other areas or separately. Users have total control over timing.

Different Recurring Calculations may be used for different fund and/or organization key General Ledger structures. Generally, there should be a one-to-one correspondence between each asset and liability account balance from the old year-end to the new year beginning.

A key concept within SunGard is that it is not necessary to physically close revenue and expenditure accounts into fund balance. The system is sensitive to the defined fiscal year and, therefore, all revenues and expenditures automatically begin with zero balances, unless specific accrual/reversal entries are posted. The creation of any beginning fund balance in the new fiscal year is prepared by the calculation of the ending fund balance (retaining multiple fund balance accounts) plus all appropriate revenue/additions minus all appropriate expenditure/deductions. The calculated result is then posted to first day of the new fiscal year. This process allows the user to easily provide multiple fiscal year comparison reporting since revenue and expenditures are not closed.

Mock Closing and Timing

Many users run the year-end closing RC several times during a time period extending over several months. They will run the RC and post an unaudited Balance Forward Entry. Subsequently, they will make year-end adjustments, undo the Balance Forward JE Posting and then run the RC again. We call this "Mock Closing". Depending on a district's needs and requirements they might consider using "Mock Closing" techniques. The timing of these activities is controlled by the user, but an example scenario might be something like the following.
Example:

To undo the Balance Forward JE posting, use GLUTSUUN utility on posting job.