End of the Year closure and New Year

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Avoid mistakes with Banana Accounting Plus

In order to have continuity and serenity of work, it is also worth starting the New Year with an updated software.
Facilitate checking your accounting work and immediately find differences: in Banana Accounting Plus, our new version, try the Balance column in the Transaction table. You can now see potential differences on each row and you can correct them right away. It is a very useful feature when closing the accounting period.
Many of our clients have already tried it and are enthusiastic about it. We advise you to switch now to Banana Accounting Plus and take advantage of the many new features.
Other resources: How to close and open the accounting year

End of the Year closure and New Year

At the end of every accounting year, before printing and filing the Balance Sheet and the Profit & Loss Statement, it is necessary to recheck the accounting file.
Please visit the Recheck the accounting page.

Tax aspects

Before closing the accounting, is is necessary to proceed with a series of operations that have fiscal implications. The marchandise account needs to be adapted, the transactions for depreciations need to be entered, the accrued income and liabilities, the VAT declaration needs to be completed, establish how and unto which accounts the profit or loss has to be attributed and there are many other operations for verification and checking.

From the program's point of view, there is no difference whether the profit is high or low. However, from a fiscal point of view, it implies a lot. These aspects need to be verified with your own tax advisor or accountant. It can be very useful, especially when you manage an accounting for the first the time and before you proceed with the closing of the books, to consult a specialist in order to understand what is required. The accountants are very busy at the beginning of the year and during the period preceding the deadline for the tax declaration. It can therefore be useful to meet with your accountant - or send him the accounting file - a few monts before the closing of the books, so that you can inform yourself on how to proceed.

Create a New Year

In order to start recording in the new year, with the Create New Year command of the Account2 menu and starting from the current year's file, a new accounting file is being created. Once the new year has been created and the file has been saved under a new name, the user can work in the file of the new year, but also in the one of the preceding year.

You can thus create the file of the new year, even before having closed the year in which you are still working. After having entered the last modifications in the previous year, use the Update Opening balances command of the Account2 menu, to retrieve the opening balances and again attribute the profit of the last year.

Performed Operations

The Create New Year command:

  • Creates a new file (with no name) with the chart of accounts and all the settings identical to your current file, but without transactions.
  • Copies the data from the Balance column of your current file to the Opening column of the new file (only for the selected classes)
  • Adds the selected amount to the opening balance of the Profit or Loss from previous year account(s) in the new file.
  • Copies the data from the Balance column of your current file to the Previous Year column of the new file (for all the accounts).
  • Updates the opening and closing dates in the File and accounting Properties of the new file.
  • In the Multi-currency accounting, enters the closing exchange rates of the previous year as opening exchange rates.
     

Create New Year command

  • Open the current file and click on the Create New Year command from the Account2 menu: a window, that shows a difference corresponding to the profit or loss that has not yet been allocated, will appear. There may also be differences due to accounting errors.
  • From the list that appears, the user can select the account to which the result of the accounting period has to be allocated, or one can directly confirm with OK if the allocation of the result has to be postponed.

Carry forward account opening balances
The opening balances of the selected options are carried forward.
Indicate which accounts are required to have opening balances carried forward. Usually the Profit and Loss Statements balances  are not carried forward. For specific needs you can always activate the option.

Allocation profit/loss

Total to allocate
The program will indicate the profit/loss that needs to be shared between various accounts.

Accounts/Amounts
If only one account is selected, the amount will automatically entered. Select the account or accounts (up to three) in which the result of the accounting period has to be allocated. In case there are several destination accounts for the result of the accounting period, the amounts should be inserted manually in the different boxes. The program will automatically update the opening balances. The Total Assets will exactly match the Total Liabilities.

Allocation of the result of the accounting period on more than three accounts.
In this case, allocate the result of the accounting period automatically on the Profit or loss brought forward account as usual, and continue to proceed with the creation of the new year.

In the new year (new file), Transactions table, proceed with a composed transaction in order to allocate the result of the accounting period from the Profit or loss brought forward account to the different destination accounts.

  • Confirm the File and accounting properties for the new year.
  • From the File menu, activate the Save as... command, indicating the folder where the new accounting file needs to be saved.

 

Updating opening balances command

The Updating Opening Balances command:

  • Retrieves the closing data of the indicated file
  • Copies them as data of the previous year in the current file (see Create New Year command).

This command doesn't influence the already entered recordings. Infact, it is like when creating a new year, as if you are recording in the current year.

Opening balances must be updated in the following situations:

  • When you have created the new year and afterwards you entered more transactions - or made corrections -  in the previous year
  • When the profit/loss of the previous year has not been allocated.

Here is how to proceed to make the update:

  • Open the current year accounting file and choose the Update opening balances command from the Account2 menu
  • Select the previous year accounting file through the Browse button
  • Follow the same steps as the ones of the Create New Year command (see top of the page)

 

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