When you post inventory-related transactions, there are various postings/adjustments that can take place on the inventory side and entries from a previous period outside of the user's or general ledger allowed range can be required, examples are rounding or cost adjustments that are applied to value entries. Inventory posting uses the dates in the General Ledger Setup to determine what dates can be used with inventory cost adjustments. The problem is the posting dates of the entries touched by cost adjustments may not always line up with the user’s allowed posting dates, and when that is the case, the user will get a and error message saying the Posting Date is not within their allowed range. 

 

You don't want transactions to post in the closed periods but you also don't want the inventory postings to be blocked. This is where Inventory Periods come in. Inventory Periods work in conjunction with the Posting Date range allowed in General Ledger Setup to determine the date that cost adjustments will post.

 

For example, if the March Inventory Period is still open, but General Ledger Setup only allows posting from May 1st on, inventory valuation adjustments will still be allowed for inventory transactions that occurred in March. Without Inventory Periods, the users will get an error about posting dates. With Inventory Periods, the adjustments will post but with a date of May 1st as per the General Ledger allowed posting date. 






Inventory Periods should be created and managed, users should NOT change the allowed posting dates to work around system controls. Sometimes, the system might require that an Inventory Period be reopened so a transaction can be processed. This is okay and can be done from the Inventory Periods list. 



 

 

 

MONTH-END/YEAR-END PROCESS – Add your own internal process steps to this checklist. 

Month-end

  1. Create and post recurring entries (with or without allocations)
  2. Review and post journal batches (general, payments, etc.)
  3. Review and post deposits
  4. Review and post open documents (sales, purchases, inventory)
  5. Run the exchange rates adjustment routine
  6. Execute and post the bank reconciliations
  7. Calculate and post the fixed assets depreciation
  8. Reconcile the subledgers and the general ledger (receivables, payables, inventory, etc.) and clean them up to apply unapplied entries as required
  9. Close the Inventory Period and make sure subsequent ones are created. Note: If Automatic Cost Posting is not on, the cost adjustments and cost posting routines should be run first. 
  10. Block posting to the closed month
    1. General Ledger Setup (Allow Posting From, Allow Posting To). Limits the posting to specified date range for ALL users
    2. User Setup. Limits the posting to specified date range for SPECIFIC users - This supercedes the General Ledger Setup

 

Year-end

The process is the same as for the month-end but the following steps must be executed before step 10 (Block posting to the closed month).

  1. Create Year - Accounting Period. Run the function from the Accounting Periods page.
  2. Close Year. Run the function from the Accounting Periods page. IMPORTANT: This function will NOT block posting to close periods, it will only lock the dates for the closed year.  
  3. Close Income Statement. Run the routine to generate the closing entries. This routine can be run more than once, as needed. Once the routine creates the entries, you have to go to the general journal batch to review and post them.