close books

[Mike or Penny Novack]

I'll try to explain this:

1) If your closing transaction(s) are as of 1/1/following year then
    a) You can run/rerun reports as the end of the previous year
    b) You won't be able to run the reports for the next year starting 
with 1/1 (will need to use 1/2 for the start). The TITLEs of your 
reports can still be made to say 1/1.
     This is the choice if you can assume that there will never be an 
external fiscal transaction with data 1/1 (it is a bank holiday after all)

2) If your closing transaction(s) are as of 12/31
    a) You must close the books only after you run the year end reports 
and the P&L report ("Income Statement") will not be rerunable.
    b) You can run the following year starting 1/1 as normal.

3) Same if your fiscal year does not coincide with the calendar year but 
in that case you probably won't be able to assume no external fiscal 
transactions on both the last day of the current year and the first day 
of the next.

What would be NICE would be to allow a "special date" for book closing 
(one no in the real calendar).

If you choose option "2" what I suggest is that you back up the file 
immediately after the year end reports (before "close the books") and 
then a backup up immediately after closing the books. Now you CAN rerun 
the reports if you must.

Michael D Novack, FLMI  (who for quite a few years "babysat" year-end 
processing for one of the world's largest "financials" --- BTW, our shop 
used the "special dates" approach so there was one fiscal date in the 
year on which no external transactions were allowed)