In order to cut off the transactions that are posted to a particular month or accounting period, the Accounts Payable System must be closed for that period. Once the period is closed, reports and agings can be generated for the period without fear of other changes being posted which might affect the values reported. These reports my be generated at any time subsequent to close of the period or any later period and the report will be generated with the same original values.

The period does not need to be closed in order to enter data for subsequent periods. The transaction date on documents and adjustments is used to determine in which period the transaction belongs. In this way you may mix transactions for various periods and the system will post each individually to the proper period.

Normally the Accounts Payable System is closed as late as possible but early enough to effect a timely General Ledger Close. Normally, this would be sometime before the middle of the following month. This allows for late invoices to be accounted for in the proper month without the unnecessary creating large accrual journal entries to the General Ledger.

The Accounts Payable System should not be closed prior to closing other subsystems which feed transactions to it. Other such subsystems may be Purchasing and Receiving, Inventory and etc. When the proper interfaces have been programmed for in the other subsystems, you will not be able to close Accounts Payable until those others have been closed.

All Payable Sets having transactions within the period being closed must be posted or the close will not be allowed.

If, after the close, you find material transactions which need to be closed into the period, you can reopen the period. The period can only be reopened when the same period is open in the General Ledger. As long as no sets of payments, adjustments, or payable items are unposted and reposted, no values should move from one period to another. However, by unposting and reposting sets, you can get late entries reposted to the correct period.

The links will guide you through the basic steps of closing a period. These links are not intended to show you all of the options and functions available but is intended to give you a quick introduction which should work under most circumstances. Use this Quick Start guide while you actually go through the process. Each Quick Start link will give you the information you need to accomplish the task. Click on the above Quick Start image to start the guide.

We suggest that you practice closing periods. and printing reports and explore the options and functions in order to fully learn the features available to you. When you are finished with practice, you can reopen and then unpost and repost and transactions sets which may have been affected while you were practicing.

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