When you use the Close Fiscal Year task, General Ledger reviews the current period ending date and potential prior year adjustments:

• If the period ending date is not equal to the fiscal year ending date and General Ledger does not find any prior year adjustments, you see the message "Prefix not at year end. No entries made to income or expense accounts."
• If the period ending date is not equal to the fiscal year ending date and General Ledger finds prior year adjustments, you see the message "Prefix not at year end. Prior year's adjustments will be closed." If you click Accept, General Ledger creates closing entries for the prior year adjustments. These entries appear in the History.glt file.
  • Note: Closing entries do not appear in an account's net activity fields for the last month of the fiscal year. These fields only show the actual activity prior to the closing for reporting purposes.
• If the period ending date is equal to the fiscal year ending date and General Ledger finds prior year adjustments, you see the message "Prior year adjustments have been found. Prior year will be closed. Close Fiscal Year will have to be run again to close the current year." If you click Accept, General Ledger creates closing entries for the prior year adjustments. These entries appear in the History.glt file.
• If the period ending date is equal to the fiscal ending date and General Ledger finds no prior year adjustments, then the normal Close Fiscal Year process continues.

The Close Fiscal Year task does the following when you actually close the year:

• Account record (Setup, Accounts):
  • The net activity values shown on the Activity (Accrual) or Activity (Cash) tabs move down one period. The Future Activity 1 value moves into Current Period Activity box, Current Period Activity value moves to Prior 1 Activity box, and so on until General Ledger replaces the last activity box, Year 1 Period 12 Activity, with the Year 1 Period 11 Activity value. General Ledger deletes the previous value for Year 1 Period 12 Activity box.
  • General Ledger adds the new Current Period Activity value to the Current Balance and YTD Net Change amounts.
  • General Ledger adds the new 1 Year Ago Activity value to the Balance 1 year ago and YTD net change 1 yr ago amounts.
• Fiscal Entity record (Setup, Prefix/Base, [prefix name], Fiscal Settings):
  • The current period ending date advances to the next period ending date defined in the fiscal calendar.
  • The next future period becomes available for posting.
  • If you selected the Automatically close period check box (File, Company Settings, GL Settings, Processing Options), you can no longer post to the period being closed. If the Automatically close period check box is clear when you close your period, you can still post to the closed period until you manually close it in the Open/Close Posting Period task (Tasks, Open/Close Posting Period).
• General Ledger also does or allows you to do the following when you use the Close Fiscal Year task:
  • Allows you to define the period end dates for the fiscal calendar two years in the future. For example, if you are closing fiscal year 2014, you can change the period end dates for fiscal year 2016.
  • Creates entries to clear the current balances of the income and expense accounts and posts the net income to the retained earnings account or accounts. See article 49051 "DocLink: What General Ledger (GL) account types close to retained earnings when closing the fiscal year?".
    • Note: Closing entries do not appear in an account's net activity fields for the last month of the fiscal year. These fields only show the actual activity prior to the closing for reporting purposes.
  • Records the closing entries in the History.glt file.
  • Moves the year end balances on the Balances (Accrual) or Balances (Cash) tab back one year. The Year End 1 Year Ago value moves to the Year End 2 Years Ago box, and that value moves to the Year End 3 Years Ago box, and so on until the old value for Year End 10 Years Ago is deleted.
  • Copies the Current Balance to the Year End 1 Year Ago box.
• Updates the current fiscal year end date.