On the first day of a new fiscal year, the prior year's ending balances for Balance Sheet accounts are automatically set as the beginning balances for the new year. Unless you have taken the specific action to "Close Year", users will be allowed to post transaction into the prior year. This is or may be desirable to do for a few days to complete entry of some year end postings. To post to a prior year, you use the posting option of "Post to Another Period" and input the full mm/dd/yy for the year you desire to post to.
When you take the action to "Close Year", (Transactions > General Ledger > Close Year) you will prevent users from posting to the year. This is a viable solution to prevent accidental posting to the incorrect year. Acclamare provides an easy manner to "Reopen a Closed Year" to allow for additional postings to the prior year. Once you perform the "Close Year" action a subsequent time, the new year's beginning balances will be updated to reflect the changes you just made to the prior year. What follows describes posting scenarios including the closing and reopening fiscal years.
Let's assume your fiscal year has just moved from 2016 to 2017.
1) After you post something back into 2016 and then Refresh GL Balances, the GL reports for 2016 will accurately reflect those postings.
2) However, GL reports for 2017 will NOT reflect those changes as the Beginning Balance values for 2017 are static from January 1st (or the first date corresponding to your fiscal year)
3) To reset the 2017 Beginning Balances to the newly calculated 2016 Ending Balance, you need to take additional steps.
3a) Go to Trans - General Ledger - Close Year.
3b) Select 2016 and click "Ok", After a few seconds you will receive message the Year Close was successful. Close the message window and then cancel out of the preceding window.
This will have reset the 2017 Beginning Balance.