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-
- There are two "close the books" functions: Periodic Close, and Year End
- Balances Forward. Both functions remind you of preliminary steps, but do not
- insist that you actually do them -- be careful!
-
- REMEMBER: So far as the IRS is concerned, your Audit Trail is ON PAPER, so
- you should NOT run either of the close routines unless you have also printed
- out your General Journal and Detail General Ledger, and put them away safe.
-
-
- Periodic Close
- --------------
- Of the two, only Periodic Close is an actual "close". A periodic close
- would normally be done at the end of every month. The only purpose of a
- periodic close is to zero out your Revenue & Expense accounts, and post the
- difference between them to your Retained Earnings account.
-
- Notice that you can STILL get a detailed Statement of Account for any Revenue
- or Expense account after a Periodic Close. Its balance will be zero, if you
- have just run Periodic Close. Statement of Account is the printed version of
- Query Accounts, on your Reports Menu.
-
- After you do a Periodic Close for the first time, you will be able to get a
- detailed Statement of Account for your Retained Earnings account (399), also.
-
-
- Year End Balances Forward
- -------------------------
- The Year End Balances Forward function is only useful in two circumstances:
-
- a) Setting up a new General Ledger's chart of accounts with beginning
- balances. See Chart documentation.
-
- b) Whenever you would like (or need) to recover disk space.
-
- Year End Balances Forward SHOULD be run only after you have also run Periodic
- Close, but that good rule is not strictly enforced. This function completely
- REMOVES previous account detail, and writes a single Balance Forward entry for
- each account into a NEW, BLANK LEDGER. You will be warned that this function
- is unusual when you run it.
-
-