Like all accounting systems designed for use by multiple people, Sage 100 is easiest to manage when defined processes are followed — a hip-pocket approach will lead to frustration, wasted effort and inaccurate data. This is particularly true for closing a period.

Why do you even need to “close a period?” After all, Sage 100’s closing process doesn’t change or consolidate much data. Why bother?

The real reason to “close” each period properly is to use the process to check that all needed data and entries have been made, and any unfinished steps that users might have made during the period are tied off.

The result is both reliable financial data and a minimum of obsolete orders and other documents cluttering up your reports, interfering with decision making.

The process to reconcile is pretty straightforward.

• Work through one module at a time
• Reconcile the module’s postings and remove unnecessary records, such as obsolete Orders.
• Work through these in the order below, minimizing any back tracking.

If you follow this same sequence each quarter (or Period!) this will be a no-brainer for Year End. If you usually have challenges closing the year, try hard to run through all these reports and processes for closing the November period, thereby handling cumulative year issues before all the year-end changes and stress.

1. Sales Order
   • Verify that Open Order and Back Order reports have only legitimate orders on them. Work with your sales and shipping departments to clear out the chaf here and produce an fully actionable report for management to use.
   • Review Quotes with your sales department to close out or delete those which are no longer relevant to custoemr service or sales forecasting.
   • Use the other reports in the Period End reports to find any details that haven’t yet been handled in SO processing.
2. Purchase Order
   • Clear old, unfinished transactions. Be sure PO’s which are no longer active are Closed, so they stay out of your current reporting.
   • Clean up Receipts to have only those received goods for which you still have no Vendor Invoice.
   • Receipt History and Purchase History reports can also be useful in clearing up outstanding PO and Inventory issues.
3. Inventory Management
   • Use the Inventory Trial Balance to confirm that inventory transactions have been correctly made. This catches cases where inventory entries were made directly to the GL, Miscellaneous items were charged to inventory accuonts, bad setups for Product Line cost variances, and period end timing errors.
   • Prepare for any physical inventory you will make. It’s best to address costing and tier issues with the physical.
4. Payroll
   • This is a process to itself. Please reference our separate post on this.
   • The goal is to ensure that the payroll bank is reconciled to the bank statement, and payroll-related liability accounts match to external statements.
5. Accounts Payable
   • Use AP Trial Balance to insure that you have all your invoices and payments in the correct periods, so that the Open AP report matches the AP GL account balance. This also catches any entries made directly to GL, which is a no-no.
   • Reconcile your bank(s) statements using Bank Rec. Make any adjustments directly through Bank Rec, so your final report matches to the bank statement.
6. Accounts Receivable
   • Use AR Trial Balance to insure that you have all your invoices and receipts in the correct periods, so that the Open AR report matches the AR GL account balance. This also catches any entries made directly to GL, which is a no-no.
   • Use the AR Deposit Transaction Report to ensure that all deposits on orders are properly accounted for.
   • AR Credit Card Settlement Report should be run as you get statements from your Merchant. Get this current before closing.
   • Reconcile your bank(s) statements using Bank Rec. Make any adjustments directly through Bank Rec, so your final report matches to the bank statement. If your system is run correctly, confirming all customer receipts at this stage will be simple check-offs.
7. General Ledger
   • Check all inventory-related, suspense and clearing accounts that are not zero-balance. GL Trial Balance Report works well to find exceptions, and GL Detail Report is good to find the details of any problems.
   • Confirm that GL balances match those of Open AR and AP, Bank Statements, Loan Statements, and other external statements. By following the previous steps there should not be any discrepancy between them.

Following this process should speed your reconciliation process and improve your results. Useful reporting will be made faster to those who need to use them for decisions, now and during the period.

Of course, if you have questions or problems about these, let us know. The call is included as part of your Knowledge Transfer Agreement.

It’s that time of year again. Closing your year-end accounting is usually stressful for many reasons, but these tips will help eliminate stress from your Sage 100 accounting system. If you use Sage 100 Payroll, see our separate post on closing out that application.

Watch your posting dates.
Most people enter lots of documents into the system with 12/31 dates. Customer and vendor invoices, customer receipts and vendor AP checks. RMA’s, PO goods receipts, manufacturing and inventory postings, etc.

The single most common complaint about the books while reconciling is that the Period End Open Invoices reports for AR and AP don’t foot to the GL balance. Inventory reports can have the same complaints. Avoid these with some simple rules to coach your team to follow.

Make regular backups.
Some steps in the closing process can remove transaction details. This can be very annoying if you happen to make a mistake during this. So, be diligent in refreshing your backup company’s data, using Library Master facility. You should do this before you start each session during which you will be closing modules.

You should also ensure that your IT operation captures a backup of all your data regularly, but especially right after 12/31, and then at least weekly (preferably nightly) through your closing process.

Check your Retain History Settings.
Most modules have an option that lets you define how long to retain history detail. For example, customer invoice and payment history, GL History, Purchase History, etc. Transactions made before the setting are removed, leaving behind only the related GL Batch posting, which has no details. If you eventually want to do multi-year analyses, losing this detail can get in the way.

Before you start closing, check your settings in each module. You can find them in the Setup folder for each module that has one, usually under its History tab. We recommend that you set each one to the maximum.

Use Paperless Office.
If you don’t yet use this paper-saver, now is the time to set it up. It’s not hard, and it really will simplify your Period End reporting. Now you can physically print only the reports you want to have at that time to markup and compare. (If you don’t like it, you can easily go back…)

Reconcile Each Module.
See our related post about reconciliations. Step through each of your modules to to ensure that all are reconciled and read fro the next period. In nearly all cases, be sure to make modifications to GL balances through the subsidiary ledgers (such as Invoicing, AP Checks, etc.) using credit or debit memos as appropriate. Make adjustments directly using Journal Entries usually makes reconciliation harder. (Of course allocations and related entries need to be just JE’s.)

Make any special Period- or Year-End Entries. 
It is best to make these final allocations and related changes after all your regular processing is reconciled. Otherwise, you risk complicating the process.

Run Period End for Each Module.
When all have been reconciled, run the Period End processing, or just change the Current Period setting in Setup for the module.

Make an Archive Copy.
Many customers make a special Company to hold their fully-reconciled database. It is certainly not required, as any closed period in modern versions of Sage 100 can be readily reopened as long as the history was retained. Some users prefer the extra safety.

Of course, if you have questions or problems about these, let us know. The call is included as part of your Knowledge Transfer Agreement.

During the first few days of a period (month), most people enter lots of documents for activities that occurred in the just-ended period. Customer and vendor invoices, customer receipts and perhaps vendor AP checks. They also include RMA’s, PO goods receipts, manufacturing and inventory postings, etc.

The single most common question we get about reconciling a period is that the month-end Open Invoices reports for AR and AP don’t foot to the month-end GL balances. Inventory reports can have the same complaints. This is universally the result of entering last period’s data but accidentally posting into this period’s GL accounting date.

This is easily avoided through a little coaching about the data entry process and some simple rules for data entry around the end of a period/quarter/year.

• Create separate batches for December documents and for January documents. If you find a December document in a January batch, use the new Sage 100 feature to move individual records to the correct batch.

• Better still, follow a rule that last-period processing will always be done during a dedicated sitting. In other words, when processing documents for the previous period, do not also process current-period documents.
  • During that session, be sure to manually set the Accounting Date to previous period for each module you’re processing. (Remember that the Accounting Date is different for each module, whether AP, SO, AR, etc.)
  • Enter the documents into the batch, check them, and then finish processing while you concentrate on posting them to the December period.
  • When done with previous-period processing for now, exit Sage 100 and reenter to begin processing current period. This ensures that as you open modules, the Accounting Date is defaults to the correct (today’s) date.

The basic rule of thumb to drum into every person on your team who posts data is:

When you deal with a previous-period entry, be sure to
double check the Posting Date in the Journal pop up.

Following these simple guidelines will result straightforward, nearly-automatic period-end reconciliations.

Of course, if you have questions or problems about these, let us know. The call, just like all others, is always free as part of your Knowledge Transfer Agreement