Maintain Accounting Periods

Find this screen

Open: Accounting System Manager > Accounting Periods > Maintain Accounting Periods.

Use this to control your accounting periods for the Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, Cash Book, Stock Control, and Nominal Ledger.

The period table holds the details of each accounting period for each ledger.

How transactions are posted from each ledger

  • Sales.

    This controls Sales Ledger transactions that do not affect the Cash Book. These are sales invoices, sales credit notes and discounts. This also covers transactions that are created by the Sales Order Processing module, such as invoices and credit notes.

  • Purchases.

    This controls Purchase Ledger transactions that do not affect the Cash Book. These are purchase invoices, purchase credit notes and discounts. This also covers transactions created by the Purchase Order Processing module such as invoices and credit notes.

  • Cash Book.

    This controls transactions that affect the Cash Book, such as sales receipts, purchase payments, direct debits and standing orders.

  • Stock.

    This controls stock movement transactions that create a nominal journal. This also covers all transactions created by the Bill of Materials module.

  • Nominal Adjustments.

    This controls transactions directly entered into the Nominal Ledger, such as journals, prepayments and accruals.

How transactions are posted into accounting periods

Period status

Transactions from each ledger are posted to the accounting periods depending on the posting date of the transaction and the Status of the period. Each period can have a status of:

  • Open.

    You can post transactions into this period from the specified ledger. If more than one period is open, the date of the transaction is used to determine which period the transaction is posted into. You specify the number of periods you can have open in the Accounting System Manager settings.

    You cannot change the accounting period dates of an open period, if any transactions have been posted into that period from any of the modules.

  • Closed.

    Any transactions entered which have date in a closed period, are posted to the next open period. You cannot change the dates of an accounting period if any of the ledgers have a closed status for that period.

  • Future.

    You cannot post any transactions into a future period. Any transactions entered which have a date in a future period, are held in a deferred posting file. These transactions are posted when the relevant period is opened.

Periods in the current and future financial years

Select the tabs to view periods in the current financial year or future financial years.

  • This Financial Year.

    This shows the period numbers, the end date and the status of each period for each ledger, for the current financial year.

    Note: You can have a financial year longer or shorter than a calendar year; e.g. if you are changing when your year starts.

  • Future Financial Years.

    This shows the period numbers, the end date and the status of each period for each ledger, for up to five future financial years. The period dates automatically follow on from the current financial year.

    You cannot Change Period Status for any periods in a future financial year until you have completed a Year End routine for the existing financial year. All periods will therefore show a Future status.

    Note: If you are using accounting period based date validation, you cannot save a transaction with a future date if the accounting period does not exist. For example, if the end date of the last period in your Next Financial Year is 30/03/2010, you cannot save a transaction dated 05/04/2010.

Extend or shorten your financial years

By default, Sage 200 creates 12 accounting periods for the current year, and for five future years. But you can have up to a maximum of 20 accounting periods.

The dates of each accounting period in the year are automatically created. If you want to shorten or extend your financial year from these provided defaults, you will need to do this by manually adjusting the period end dates for open or future periods within the current financial year, and for future financial years.

See the following examples on how to change your financial year.