To close a financial year

If you haven't already read the Year-end Procedures Overview, see Preparing to close your financial year or payroll year for more information.

Please note that this task requires single-user access. See Single-user file locking for more information.

  1. Print all the reports that you wish to keep that show the previous year's transaction activity. You might consider printing a copy of each journal, because they show all transaction activity for a specified period.
  2. Make at least one backup of your company file. Clearly mark this backup and put it in storage as part of your permanent records.

Warning: Make a backup before closing the financial year!

It's very important that you make a backup before continuing. After you start a new financial year, the only way to view the detail of transactions that were purged from the company file during the start a new year process is to restore a backup of the company file.

To ensure that the backup you make is a reliable backup, we recommend, that as a test, you restore the backup before you start the new financial year in your company file.

We also recommend that you make multiple backups of your company file - that is, more than one copy of your company file at different locations. The purpose of multiple backups is simple: backups can fail as easily as computers. If the backed-up file is damaged, you're in just as much trouble as you would be without any backup at all.

  1. Choose Start a New Year from the File menu, and then choose Start a New Financial Year from the sub-menu that appears.
  2. Follow the instructions that appear on your computer screen.

Warning: Financial years probably shouldn't be changed

Once you've established your financial year, you are legally limited in your ability to make changes to it. For example, if your financial year begins on 1st February, you may not be able to move it to 1st March. Consult your accountant or an MYOB Certified Consultant before considering any such change. (To locate an MYOB Certified Consultant in your area, see "MYOB Accounting Plus Products and Services" in your Getting Started manual.

In Accounting Plus, and according to the standard used by most accountants, financial years take the name of the calendar year in which they end. For example, if your financial year is from 1st October, 2001, to 30th September, 2002, that year is referred to as "financial year 2002."

  1. After you start a new financial year, we recommend that you optimise and verify your company file. Optimising your company file reduces your company file's size and makes your company file more efficient. The Verify Company File utility checks your company file for errors and ensures that your company file is in "healthy" working condition.

Note: Optimising and verifying may take a while

The amount of time needed to optimise and verify a company file for use with MYOB Accounting Plus depends upon the size of the file and the capabilities of the computer you're using. If you have a very large company file and a slower computer with little memory, be prepared for optimisation and verification to take some time.

See also:

To optimise a company file

To make a backup

To restore a backup

To verify your company file