Top tips for end of financial year

Our team has compiled a handy list of tasks, reports and checks to help you prepare for end of financial year.

Things you can do NOW

Review Open Documents

Now is a great time to tidy up any unfinished work. Check for open documents using the following reports.

Sales Orders & Invoicing

• Reports | Sales in Progress | Work in Progress report – check for unfinalised invoices and jobcards.
• Reports | Sales in Progress | Sales in Progress report – check for unfinalised sales orders/backorders.
• Sales | Invoice & Payments Journal – check for any unposted invoices from previous days.

Stock & Purchasing

• Receiving | Print Stock Receipts Proof list – for any unbalanced supplier invoices.
• Receiving | Print Unposted invoices list – for any unposted supplier invoices.  

Perform a Stocktake

Most businesses will perform a full stocktake at or around end of financial year. This is necessary in order to provide your accountant with an accurate stock valuation, and to report movement in stock value from the prior year. Your StockMate mobile scanner will be a necessity at this time of year!

Run AR & AP Reconciliation Reports

The reconciliation reports will compare the movement from each module to the control account in General Ledger and display any variances.  The reconciliation reports can be found in each module under Reports | Reconciliation Reports, there are several options, single period view, month by month view and all periods from selected period.   If there are any variances between the ledgers and the GL control accounts please seek assistance.  You can contact your accountant, or book some consultancy time with one of our consultants.

Run AR & AP Sub Ledger Verification Reports

This is located in General Ledger | Reports | Reconcile to AR/AP Ledgers and ensures all batches posted from AP and AR modules have been posted successfully into the General Ledger.  
As above, if you find a discrepancy here, seek advice asap or book a consultancy session.

Run Trial Balance and ensure the movement columns balance

If a year-end close has not been performed for the previous year, there will be an imbalance in the Trail Balance columns. Your debit and credit movement columns should always balance. Where there is an imbalance between the debit and credit movement columns, this will most likely be due to an unbalanced batch. The Transaction audit report has an option to show unbalanced batches only. Seek specialist advise if this is not the case.

Check Stock Valuation matches the GL Stock Accounts

Run your Stock Valuation report and compare this to the value of stock in your Balance sheet (consolidated version). This provides two different views of the net value of your stock on hand. It is not unusual to have small differences due to timing, but generally the two numbers should remain relatively closely aligned. It’s best to check this early – don’t wait until after year end.

One reason why you might find an imbalance is if you have made manual adjustments to the Average Cost of any products throughout the year and not adjusted the General Ledger to reflect this. You may need to do some end of year journals to bring this valuation back in line. This is best done after a full stocktake, unless you have been performing regular rolling stocktakes – in which case you might do smaller monthly journals throughout the year. Contact your Accountant if you are unsure.

Catch up on your Purchase Invoices

Ensure that all Purchase Invoices and Delivery Dockets have been entered, wherever possible. Enter your stock Invoices via Stock & Purchasing and your non-stock Invoices via Accounts Payable. You’ll want to have your stock and accounts all up to date when end of year comes around.

Tasks to complete on June 30

Post all Sales Invoices and Purchase Invoices

At the close of business, post all Sales Invoices and Purchase Invoices where possible.  If your system is configured for overnight posting, ensure that you are able to take a backup after posting and before trade starts for July 1.  You can manually post in Sales Orders & Invoicing | Sales | Update Sales & Payments.

Run your AR and AP Aged Balances Reports

These reports can’t be printed retrospectively so if you need these reports for your accountant, run them now. Note that you can save them to PDF, Excel or Text file for future use. It is a good idea to be doing this on a monthly basis in case you need to refer to previous months’ reports.

Run a Stock Valuation Report

At close of business on June 30, run your Stock Valuation report and save it to PDF or Excel. Again, it is a good idea to run this report at the end of each month and save a copy.

Open the new Financial Year

To open the upcoming financial year, go to General Ledger | Periods | Open/Close Financial Periods and in the box in the lower-right corner, type in the year and click OK. This step can actually be done at any time in the lead up to the new year.

Update your AP Period

If most or all of your Purchase Invoices have been entered for June, you can now update your AP period. Note that you can still manually change the period on individual Invoices during stock receipting if you need to back-date or forward-date an Invoice. AP | Monthly | Update current AP Period.

Update your AR Period

As per your normal end of month process, you’ll want to update your AR period ready for trading the next day. AR | Monthly | Update current AR Period.

Take a Backup

It is best to take a full backup of your data as at 30 June, in case this is needed down the track.  It may also be a good time to copy to the Training system. This can be handy in the coming days if you’ve forgotten to run any reports. You can copy to training via Administration | Other | Copy to Training System.

You’re all ready for EOFY!

Following these steps will help make your End of Financial Year as smooth as possible. Every business is different, so there are sure to be other things that you’ll want to include in your own end of year process.

If you’d like a refresher on any of these processes, or if this is your first EOFY, you can book in a training session with a Foresiight Consultant.