Stub Year - Need to adjust Fiscal Periods

[tolver]

We are changing our year end from April 30th to December 31st. I am currently working on closing April 30, 2008 and setting up the calendar for the balance of this calendar year and only need 8 periods, not 12.

What is the best way to do this? Can I simply ignore the last four periods? Should I setup a new database (I'd rather not, for historical data comparison purposes).

Thanks,
Tracey

 

[DjangMan]

One way is to make the last four periods the last four days of the final month. They don't have to be one month long.

 

[tolver]

Good point! Another related issue - is there any way to adjust the fiscal years? What I mean is, that May 1, 2008 started Fiscal 2009, but when we move to the new year end, we will want to "reuse" 2009 starting for Jan 1, 2009.

 

[DjangMan]

That isn't as pretty. The short (and long) answer is, no.

Typically I would suggest creating a new company. You can still do historical comparisons with the previous company using FR (cleverly).

 

[ettienne]

I have done this several hundred times over the past 15+ years, changing year end always involves creating a new company with the correct year end date, then export/import the transactions from the old company into the new company and allocate the new year/period to the transactions in the new company.
You cannot adjust the fiscal years, and fiddling with the period end dates normally means your fiscal year gets out of synch, i.e. you end up with '2010' when it should be '2009'.

 

[tolver]

Thank you all.

One last question - does it matter when we create the new company and run the export/import? Can I close the current fiscal year and then I have to the end of the stub year to make the changes?

Thanks again,
Tracey

 

[DjangMan]

If I'm following the question correctly you can close the year at any time and export from the non-stub company at any time.

 

[tolver]

That's what I thought, thanks!

 

[tolver]

ettienne:

What do you mean by allocate periods to the transactions on import? Are you suggesting we change the export file before importing?

We've gotten in touch with a service provider but Sage does not support our version anymore and therefore, the add-on program is not available for 5.1, and since the other systems we use that feed into Accpac are no longer supported, we really don't want to upgrade.

Thanks!

 

[ettienne]

Change the year/periods before you import the transactions. How you do this depends on how you export/import the transactions.

 

[ry77]

tolver,
"You can still do historical comparisons with the previous company using FR (cleverly). "

I have to create a new company for a stub year-end. I would like to be able to make sure I can still view historical data in the new company. When you said using FR - what exactly is this?

Thanks

 

[ettienne]

FR = Financial Reporter

 

[ry77]

Thanks for your reply ettienne!
Unfortunately, we run 5.2 and I don't think that is part of our software package - I certainly haven't seen it.

Ryan

 

[ettienne]

It's been there since version 1.0, look under General Ledger.

 

[ry77]

Hi ettienne,
Okay I see what you mean! I didn't realize it was called that :S I only see the option to print financial statements. Is there another 'part' of the FR we could use or is it just through the statements we could do historical comparisons.

Thanks!

 

[ettienne]

Under GL Financial Reporter you should see Print Financial Statements and Statement Designer. Statement Designer allows you to design financial statements, and Print Financial Statements allows you to print the financial statements you have designed.

 

[SeisaT]

My only problem here is about a client who maintains that they do not use Gregorian calendar but still have the 12 fiscal periods. Their week starts on Monday and ends in Sunday. They want to have what they call a 4-4-5 fiscal periods whereby the first two months have 4 weeks and the third on 4 weeks. This formation goes on until Period 12.

I emulated that in Accpac 5.4a and the DIC returns the following error message:

Fiscal Calendars
Fiscal Year: 2009
W: The fiscal year does not span 1 entire year.
1 Error(s) found in Fiscal Calendars.

I indicated that Pd 1 starts on the 5/JAN/2009 and ends on the 01/FEB/2009 since their week begins on Monday.

Could there be a problem with processing if they ignore the DIC message (I don't know what the "W" means in the message)?

These guys are in a Manufacturing business.

Rgds,
SeisaT

 

[ettienne]

Last time I looked 4+4+5 = 13, they should have 13 periods.
W = Warning. It's a warning, not an error.

 

[SeisaT]

I don't really know about this, Ettienne. But I will probably model it as using 13 periods as opposed to 12 periods. What borders me is that they maintain they are still running a 12 periods calendar. They may not like it and I just don't know if I can convince them that they're really running 13 periods.

I revisited my previous issue and had to indicate that the Pd 12 ends on the 04/Jan/2010 and Accpac seems happy about it as it didn't return the "W: The fiscal year does not span 1 entire year." error during DIC.

Do still have more thoughts after this update?

Rgds,
SeisaT

 

[DjangMan]

They are running 13 periods. 4/4/5 is also common in the restaurant business (for whatever reason). Ettienne can probably confirm but I think you can create the next year with 13 periods (after year-end) and then you don't have to deal with the 12 periods masquerading as 13.