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