Summary

This document outlines the fiscal year end process, from creating a chart of accounts in a new fiscal year to locking out fiscal periods once the year end process is complete. This document just outlines the steps in the process. If you would like specific information about a certain step, follow the links to the documents that provide more detailed explanations.

Create a chart of accounts in a new fiscal year

Before you can create a budget for a future fiscal year, you must create a chart of accounts for that fiscal year. Use the Create a New Fiscal Year feature (GL> Utilities> Create a New Fiscal Year) to copy the chart of accounts of the current fiscal year to the future fiscal year.

Once the current chart of accounts has been copied to the future fiscal year, you can modify the chart of accounts by adding or removing GL accounts, and creating new funds.

When the balances from the current year are rolled to the future fiscal year, the account balances are moved using the go to account attached to the GL accounts in the current fiscal year (go to accounts are attached to GL accounts using the Chart of Accounts Maintenance window in GL> Maintenance> Chart of Accounts). When you are modifying the chart of accounts, make sure the go to accounts in the current fiscal year point to the correct GL accounts in the future fiscal year.

Budgeting

Once the chart of accounts has been created in the future fiscal year, you can add budgets to those GL accounts. There are several different budgeting tools that allow you to generate budgets.

Purchase orders

You are not required to close the purchase orders that have not been fulfilled in the current fiscal year, but you should roll them to the next fiscal year if you think they will be fulfilled after year end. For example, if you have POs that have been encumbered in 2022, but will not be fulfilled until 2023, you should roll those POs to 2023. This will move the encumbered amount from 2022 to fiscal year 2023, and reestablish the PO in the new fiscal year.

Purchase orders are rolled over to a new fiscal year using the Roll Over POs batch process (PO> Roll Over POs). This process will move the encumbered amounts of selected POs from the current fiscal year to the next fiscal year and reestablish the PO in the next fiscal year so it can be attached to an AP module invoice. The process also gives you the option of creating budget adjustments for the amount of the encumbrances being moved into the new fiscal year. For example, if you roll a PO for $500 to the new fiscal year, you will have the option of creating a $500 budget adjustment on the GL account attached to the PO line item.

The Roll Over POs process can be run as many times are necessary, but once a PO has been moved to the new fiscal year, it cannot be moved back.

You can leave the POs that have not been fulfilled open in the previous fiscal year. They will have no effect on the balance of any GL accounts (encumbrances are used for reporting only and do not create journal entries). If you would like to close the POs of the prior fiscal year, use the Change Orders process (PO> Change Orders).

Enter the closing journal entries

Make sure there are no open batches containing transactions for the current fiscal year in any module and sub-system. Once you have verified that there are no uncommitted transactions for the current fiscal year, create any closing journal entries using the Journal Entries palette (GL> Journal Entries).

Generate the year end reports

Once your budget is complete and you are near the end of the fiscal year there are a few reports to run to ensure that your balances are correct.

• Trial Balance (GL> Reports> Trial Balance)
• Balance Sheet (GL> Reports> Balance Sheet)
• GL Fund Balances (GL> Reports> GL Fund Balances)
• Any other reports you deem necessary to check your numbers, such as Report Builder reports (GL> Reports> Report Builder)

Fiscal year end reset

The Fiscal Year End Reset tool (GL> Utilities> Fiscal Year End Reset) is used to roll the expense and revenue account balances into the fund balance accounts set up in each fund. This process can also be used to roll the adopted budget amounts to the current budget.

Post a journal entry to a previous year

Cirrus is a soft close, meaning you can post journal entries to previous fiscal periods or fiscal years as long as they haven’t been locked using the Lockout Periods feature (GL> Utilities> Lockout Periods). If you post a journal entry to a previous fiscal year, you must run the Refresh Beginning Balances feature to update the beginning balances of those GL accounts.

Lockout fiscal periods

The Lockout Periods feature is used to lock previous fiscal periods and keep users from posting journal entries to them.