FIACCT 02-04.20 General accounting- system closing functions

Effective: July 1, 1994
Revised: September 1, 2006
Reviewed: February 1, 2010

Purpose

This policy provides information on the system closing functions performed as part of the monthend closing cycle, including retention times.

Background

The fiscal accounting year is divided into 12 monthly accounting periods with an additional 13th month accounting period used for yearend adjustments. Each transaction contains an accounting period field which designates to which open month it posts to, and transactions cannot be posted to a closed month. The accounting period is normally left blank and is inferred from the date the transaction is input; however, the posting period may specified by manually entering the accounting period. The accounting periods are designated in the FMFY format (fiscal month fiscal year) by the number of the month in the fiscal year and the fiscal year; for example, 0295 is August 1994 and 1196 is May 1996.

As many transactions as possible are posted to each month in order to make the accounting information and reports meaningful. This is done by keeping the month open to enter new transactions through the first Friday of the next month, unless that is the first day of the month. In that case, the monthend will run on the second Friday of the month. The monthend Closing cycle is performed and monthly reports are processed and distributed for the previous month by the Monday following the monthend run.

The monthend Closing cycle performs the following:
 Updates certain ledgers with the closed status of transactions,
 Purges closed transactions in the ledgers and tables,
 Separates the detail transactions for the month and writes them to detail files,
 Summarizes the detail transactions for the month and posts the summary to year-to-date ledgers,
 Marks the month closed.

The open item ledgers for the Open Purchase Order Ledger, the Open Payment Voucher Ledger, and the Open Invoice Ledger are brought up to date to reflect the closed status of the corresponding records in the related open tables. This enables any reports ran against these open ledgers to reflect the correct open or closed status of the items in the tables. The closed records in these ledgers are kept on-line for three months, the current month, and the two preceding months. Older records are purged and archived to tape for future electronic access.

The individual table records are closed by the document processors. The closed records in the following tables are kept on-line for three months (the current month and preceding two months), and the older records are purged from the system:

Open Purchase Order Header Table (OPOH)
Open Purchase Order Line Table (OPOL)
Open Payment Voucher Header Table (OPVH)
Open Payment Voucher Line Table (OPVL)
Open Invoice Header Table (OINH)
Open Invoice Line Table (OINL)
Document Control Table (DCTL)

The accepted transactions for the accounting period being closed are separated from transactions
belonging to open periods in the following detail ledgers:

Detail General Ledger
Detail Collection Memo Ledger
Detail Budget Ledger
Detail Cash Ledger.

The detail transactions are written to monthly detail files which will be kept for two years (the current year and the two preceding years). These transactions are also summarized and posted to update the following year-to-date ledgers:

Year-to-Date General Ledger
Year-to-Date Collection Memo Ledger
Year-to-Date Budget Ledger
Year-to-Date Cash Ledger.

And those transactions lines that pertain to grants and projects are copied to the following ledgers:

Detail Inception-to-Date Grant Ledger
Detail Inception-to-Date Project Ledger.