How Do I Close Financial Periods?

Closing Procedures

Following below is a step-by-step month-end procedure to close the financial period and align cieTrade.net’s sales, costs and gross profit with your accounting software’s general ledger.

1. Close the financial period by using Process Period End under the Accounting menu.
   This action locks the financial period so that no changes can affect the financials in that period (ensures that numbers do not change).
2. Run the Closing Adjustments Report listed under the Accounting menu.
   This report provides the basis for making a single journal entry that will distribute accrued sales and accrued purchases from the balance sheet to your income statement.
   1. Set the From and To fields to the financial period being closed.
   2. Use the report to create up to four summary journal entries for sales, sales-adjustments debit memos and credit memos, and expenses.
3. Reconcile sales by checking that the balance in the Sales Accrual account is zero after your month-end posting. You can also run a Sales Journal for the period and compare the totals to the Sales Report in your accounting software.
4. Reconcile Open Payables (un-received expense accruals)  by Running the Open AP Invoices report as of your month end date. The balance in the AP Accrual GL account after the closing entry should match the total Open Invoices amount on the report when run “as of” the last day of the closed period.  
   Note: If it does not match you should first check whether there are any Closing Alerts on the Closing Adjustment Report that should account for the difference.
5. Finally, close or lock the financial period in your accounting system.