How To: Clear Down Accounts (Year End)

Table Of Contents

Introduction
What happens during the year-end clear down?
Important system checks

Introduction

The Accounts Clear Down (Year End) process closes a financial year by bringing forward balance sheet account balances and transferring the year's profit or loss into the balance sheet.
This process should only be carried out once all transactions for the financial year have been reconciled and you are ready to prevent further nominal postings to that year.
Warning: Once an Accounts Clear Down has been completed, it cannot be undone.
Recommendation: Before running a year-end clear down, perform a Copy Live 2 Test and test the process in your training or test system first.
If you only need to close a monthly accounting period, see Accounting Periods.

Prerequisites

Before you begin:
  • Complete all Accounts Clear Down prerequisites and checks.
  • Ensure all year-end reconciliations and accounting checks have been completed.
  • Create and verify a current database backup.
  • Ensure all users are logged out of Khaos Control while the process runs.
Important: Keep a verified database backup available before proceeding.

Steps

  1. Open the Accounts screen (show me how).
  2. From the Other Actions menu, select Accounts Clear Down (Year End).
  3. In the date range window, select the financial year you want to close.
  4. A warning message will appear advising that the year-end process cannot be undone and recommending that you have a backup available.
  5. Confirm that a backup has been taken and click Yes to continue.
  6. A second confirmation window will display the selected date range for the clear down.
  7. Review the dates carefully and click Yes to proceed.
    Note: The duration of the process depends on the volume of data within your system and may take some time to complete.
  8. When the process has finished, an information message will confirm that the year-end clear down has completed successfully.
  9. Click OK to close the message.

Additional Information

What happens during the year-end clear down?

When the process runs:
  • Balance sheet nominal balances are carried forward into the new financial year.
  • The year's profit or loss is transferred into the balance sheet.
  • Historical account data remains available for reporting and enquiry purposes.
  • Nominal transactions within the closed year are locked from further standard posting activity.

Important system checks

The system will notify you if:
  • The selected year contains closed transactions.
  • The selected year contains unreconciled bank transactions.
  • You attempt to close a financial year that has already been cleared down.
Khaos Control also records the date of the most recent year-end clear down for validation and auditing purposes.

End of Year Adjustment Journals

Within Accounts | Nominal Accounts, the EoY Adjustment Journal option allows adjustment journals to be posted after a financial year has been closed.
Important: End of Year Adjustment Journals can only be posted on the final day of the previously closed financial year.

Notes

  • The clear down process closes accounts but does not delete historical data.
  • Closed years can still be viewed and reported on after the year-end process has been completed.
  • During the clear down process, Khaos Control creates brought-forward postings for balance sheet nominals where activity exists within the period being closed.
  • For accounts that are rarely used, such as Opening Balances, you may not see a brought-forward posting for every year that has been closed. Instead, a single brought-forward posting may remain from the period in which the original entry was created.

See Also


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