What are the end of year closing procedures?

Before you can start posting activity in the new year, you need to run the End of Year Closing utility in FIMS.  The utility is located in the General Ledger module > File Maintenance > End of Year Closing.   This utility does not actually 'close' the year, as FIMS allows you to keep the General Ledger open for multiple years at the same time.    

Before running the utility, take the time to look for funds that need to be retired. If possible, retire them before running the utility for the first time for the new year. The End of Year Closing utility performs the following functions:

• Creates a set of general ledger accounts records for the new year, based on the current year's accounts.  If an account is set as inactive and would have a zero beginning balance in the new year, the utility will not create it for the new year.
• Establishes the beginning balances for the balance sheet accounts in the new year.  The ending balance for the old year automatically becomes the beginning balance for the new year.
• Closes the revenue, expense and transfer accounts to the appropriate fund balance accounts in the new year.
• Creates a zero beginning balance for revenue, expense and transfer accounts in the new year.

The attached documentation will provide instructions for running the utility and explains what is happening in your General Ledger when this is run. The documentation also provides information on other procedures that need attention at year end for your organization:  

• General Ledger calendar            
• Automatic EOY Processing            
• Closing Modules by Date            
• Rolling asset rebalancing targets forward            
• Clearing 1099 Adjustment Amounts            
• Updating future years accounts            
• Running reconciliation reports            
• Forwarding grant numbering            
• Auto-creating grant applications            
• Creating recurring grants from fund distributions            
• Recurring tickles  

Note: If after running the normal end of year you are going to make transactions in the previous year and want those to roll forward to new year, you will need to re-run the end of year tool withiout checking the checkbox to advance the fiscal year, that only gets checked the first time you run it.

You can run this process as many times as you like but be sure to not check the checkbox to advance the fiscal year again. That checkbox should only be checked the first time you run the EOY process to create the new year. Any subsequent times the checkbox should be left unchecked.

After you run the regular end of year process, we recommend setting up Automatic End of Year: