Preparing to close your financial year or payroll year

Year-end Procedures Overview > Preparing to close your financial year or payroll year

Although we refer to the activities in this part as "year-end" tasks, you could also think of them as "year-beginning" tasks, since they usually are performed in the first month of the new year and are meant to prepare you for the new year. Here is a small amount of background information about the tasks you should perform before you begin closing a financial or payroll year.

Note: When your years must be closed

Payroll The payroll year must be closed on 5th April.

Financial Accounting Plus doesn't require that you close your financial year at any particular time. You can continue to use Accounting Plus for up to 12 months after the last month of your current financial year without concern, since Accounting Plus allows you to track information for the previous, current and next financial years. (If you don't close your financial year at the end of your current financial year, you won't be able to print current information on some reports, however.) In general, it's good business practice to close your previous financial year in the first month of the new financial year, but the choice is yours.

To learn the current financial year of your Accounting Plus company file, choose Company Information from the Setup menu. This window also displays the last Month in Financial Year, the number of Accounting Periods per year and the Conversion Month. The Conversion Month is the first month you started making entries in Accounting Plus.

Before you close the payroll year, complete all pay runs and print year-end forms.

To the best of your ability, be sure that all transactions for the year that's ending are entered in MYOB Accounting Plus before you begin closing the year. That way, you can avoid making adjusting Nominal Journal entries in the new year, and your yearly records will be more accurate, making it easier for you to compare your company's performance from one year to the next. If you have an accountant who produces your year-end financial reports, you may need to wait for your accountant to provide you with any adjusting entries that may be needed.

Perform the tasks you usually do at the end of a month. For information about month-end procedures refer to Month-end Procedures Overview.

If your accountant requests an electronic copy of your accounting records, you can use MYOB Accounting Plus to create a comma-separated text file that can be read by CaseWare, a client write-up software package that is popular among accountants. For a step-by-step procedure, see Working with your company file and CaseWare.

Printing year-end payroll forms
Backing up your MYOB Accounting Plus company file