Using FACTS as a Period Ending Process

Using FACTS as a Period Ending Process

There is no such thing as a current or inactive period in the FIMS General Ledger (or an inactive fiscal year). You can post to any period at any time, limited only by the Close General Ledger by Date utility in General Ledger, which is designed to prevent posting to an audited fiscal year. It is the Apply Date of each General Ledger Journal entry that determines which period it affects. Refer to Closing Modules by Date in the General Ledger module for more information.

However, if you reconcile and allocate your Investment Pool(s) monthly, as most organizations do, FACTS allocation and posting becomes the de facto period closing process.

Neither individual Fund statements nor a consolidated balance sheet will be complete and accurate for a period until you allocate your investment returns and post them to General Ledger accounts. However, you cannot run the FACTS allocation until all relevant Transactions are recorded.

• Any Gifts that were deposited directly into a Pooled Investment Account or transferred from a non-Pooled deposit account into the Pool during the Cycle must be recorded in FIMS and posted through to General Ledger Accounts.
• Any Grants that were disbursed from the Pool during the Cycle must be posted through (regardless of whether they were paid directly from a checking account inside the Pool or paid from an independent checking account and covered with a transfer from the Pool).
• Any other Transaction that affects a Fund’s position in the Pool must be recorded and posted through. This includes inter-Fund transfers where the total Pool balance is not affected because the same amount is coming from one or more Funds in the Pool and being transferred to another Fund in the same Pool.

NOTE: Some FIMS Transactions do not affect the Pool. For example, a Grant Voucher posted from Accounts Payable sends a debit to Grants Expense and a credit to Grants Liability, but if the Grant is not paid during the period this activity will have no effect on Pooled assets.

There is one notable exception to the rule that FACTS processing ends a period. If you take administrative fees monthly, and base them on each Fund’s ending Fund balance for the month, you must run FACTS first, then Admin Fees. You can use the Change Confirm Dates utility to move the entries to the following month within FACTS or create the entries with a FACTS Confirm Date that falls outside the posted Cycle (usually the first day of the following month).