You didn’t say, but I am assuming you are talking about closing the sales module on the Receivables Year-End Closing window. If not, please give me some more detail on what you did. If yes, I am not aware of any way you can re-open the year. I am sure that this can be done in the SQL tables with a lot of work, but I am also guessing that is not what you mean.

However, as I have written many times before, this close process is irrelevant and only matters if you are looking at YTD columns in SmartLists. Operationally this will not make any difference to anything. When I go into that window in our live company it tells me that the last time we closed this module was in 2001 and we are able to use all GP functionality with no problem.

-Victoria

You must close the year in the Fixed Assets module if you are using it. Otherwise, you will not be able to run depreciation in the new year.

-Victoria

Good question. Yes, based on the same logic as payables and receivables, I would argue that the tax-year close is optional. The companies that I have worked with use the tax reports (actually mostly SmartLists) in GP based on date ranges, not based on current year/last year, and again unless you can easily accomplish a clean cut-off between years, you’re not going to have accurate yearly totals this way. Additionally, according to the documentation, “When you close the tax year, tax information from the prior year is deleted”. This is not something I am a big fan of as a general rule. I don’t know too many people who have gotten in trouble for having too much data.

-Victoria

Thank you!

The year-end close process does not have anything what-so-ever to do with 1099′s. Because of the special nature of 1099′s they are treated differently in GP and are ‘date sensitive’. We use GP for our accounting in-house. The last time we performed the year-end close in the payables module was 2002. We send out 1099′s every year with no issues.

However, there is something to be said for knowing a process you have has worked for you in the past and thus will work in the future. If you’re comfortable with it and are confident it works, then keep doing it. If it is causing you undue work and grief and you’re not sure about some of the advice you’re seeing, the only way to go is to test it.

Yes and no. While your Amount Billed might be closer to correct with what you’re proposing, the Amount Paid will not. Amount Billed is probably more important, but still something to consider. Theoretically, you could cut 2012 checks and not post them until you close the year in the Payables module, I think that would be the closest you could come to both of those numbers being correct. Also, this is assuming that the same logic was applied when you closed Payables last year.

-Victoria

Neither the GL, nor 1099 printing, nor your ability to post payables with either 2011 or 2012 dates will be impacted by performing (or not performing) the Payables year-end close process. The Payables year-end close is optional – I don’t even bother with it. If you decide to go ahead with the Payables year-end close and if your fiscal year is the calendar year, you would do both the fiscal and calendar close at the same time.

-Victoria

Maybe ‘date sensitive’ was not the right term to use. While the AP and AR (really PM and RM) modules are date sensitive, the year end close process is not.

Example 1:
You create a brand new customer in 2010. You post $1000 in invoices to this customer with 2010 dates and $500 in invoices to the same customer with 2011 dates. You close the 2010 year after all the $1500 of invoices have been posted. This customer shows:
Life to date = $1500 in invoices
Year to date (using amounts from last close) = $0 in invoices
Last year to date (using amounts from last close) = $1500 in invoices

Example 2:
You create a brand new customer in 2010. You post $1000 in invoices to this customer with 2010 dates and close the 2010 year. Then you post another $250 in invoices to the same customer with 2010 dates. This customer shows:
Life to date = $1250 in invoices
Year to date (using amounts from last close) = $250 in invoices
Last year to date (using amounts from last close) = $1000 in invoices

This is really (to me) a reporting issue. If you look at each individual transaction, GP has the correct dates. However some ‘summaries’ that GP keeps are all using the ‘amount since last close’ logic.

In a real life business it is usually impossible to have a clean cut off between years – where you post everything for one year, close it, the start posting for the next year. This is the only scenario that will result in all the possible summaries and out-of-the-box reports to be correct.

Hope that helps explain in more detail.

-Victoria

thank you for the response. I thought AR/AP were date sensitive as stated in the kb articles for steps on closing AR and AP? In what effect will it have if we will not close these modules and just close GL. sorry for the noob question.

Thanks Victoria

The AR and AP year end close is not ‘date sensitive’ meaning it will do just what you’re seeing – close everything posted through the time of the year end close process, regardless of date. That’s why I say what I say in the blog post above about most companies not closing AR and AP. You can get more detail on this by reading the KB articles for the specific modules (see the links to them at the top of this blog post).

-Victoria

maybe you can help. We created a new company and attempting to close it for the year 2009 fiscal year. We are currently on 2010 fiscal year now. however, if we try to close the AP and AR modules. The reports that were generated from the year end close for AP and AR included numbers from the current years. Shouldn’t the Year end close reports for these modules be limited to just 2009? any thoughts why this is happening?