Specifications

Computer Tutorial 3 Lesson 7  9
7. Print the month-end financial statements. Make sure the balance sheet balances and
the net income amount in the income statement matches that on the balance sheet.
(See Lesson 6.)
8. Print a transactions listing for the entire month. (See Lesson 5.)
9. Assemble in a file folder the batch listings, posting journals, final adjusted trial
balance, month-end financial statements, and transactions listing for the month. This
folder comprises the month-end file for the fiscal period. File it carefully because it
represents the official audit trail.
10. Quit the general ledger and back it up on removable media, and store the backup
media with the listings and printouts from step 9. (See Lessons 2 and 7.)
11. Make an extra archive copy of your general ledger data and store it off-site.
12. Depending on the volume of transactions and storage capacity, you may want to
consolidate posted transactions to save disk space. (See Topic 7.6.)
13. Close the fiscal period when no significant change is expected. This prevents
accidental posting to the wrong period. You can always open the period later, if
necessary.
Starting a new month
At the beginning of each month, certain amounts, which were accrued at the end of the
previous month, should be reversed. Examples of such amounts include accrued liabilities,
accrued payroll, and accrued interest. Accpac can automatically reverse entries in the next
period if they were originally set up to be reversed. Pay special attention to automatically
reversed entries at the last fiscal period of a fiscal year. If a new fiscal year has not been
created, the reversing entry will not post properly. See Topic 7.6 for a description of
procedures for opening a new fiscal year.
By reversing these accruals, you do not need to track them when recording the actual
transactions. For example, if accrued interest is reversed at the beginning of the month when
the actual interest is received, you simply record the receipt as interest income. If you did not
reverse the accrued interest, you would have to record the accrued portion against accrued
interest receivable, and the balance as interest income.
When you post a reversing transaction batch, it automatically posts the original transaction in
the current period and the reversing transaction in the next period, so your general ledger is
ready for the new month.