Financial year end procedures

At the end of your fiscal year, produce the reports required by your accountant, close your accounts, and then change your year end date. You can also lock down your fiscal year so that no one can enter transactions in a previous year once your accounts are complete.

Note:

Before closing your year, be sure that you've entered all of your transactions up to and including the last day of the year. If you run any month-end procedures (for example, posting prepayments and accruals or depreciation), post them as normal.

What reports should I produce?

We recommend you run the following reports. You may want to check with your accountant which reports they want you to produce. For more information, see About reports.

  • Profit and Loss. This reports shows how your business has performed over a specified period of time. When running it, you should run it from the first day of your fiscal year to the last. This shows the value of sales, expenses, and overheads and the resulting gross and net profit or loss for the year.
  • Balance Sheet. You should run this report up to the last day of your fiscal year. It then shows the worth of your business from the day you started trading up to the end of the fiscal year. It includes your company assets and liabilities.
  • Trial Balance. You should run the trial balance from the first day of your fiscal year to the last. This shows the balance on each account between these dates.

After you've printed your reports, you can change your fiscal year, and if required, lock it down.

Closing your books

Traditionally, accounting systems follow a year-end process where values are cleared from Profit and Loss accounts to Retained Earnings. Follow the steps below to close accounts to a Retained Earnings account:

  1. Select Adjustments, Journals.
  2. Create journal entries as needed to post amounts to your Retained Earnings ledger account, using the last day of your fiscal year as the date. Refer to the table below for more information.
    Note:

    This information is for reference only. Contact your accountant for advice that may relate to your company or situation.

    Account TypeDebitCreditNormal Account Balance
    AssetsIncreaseDecreaseDebit Balance
    LiabilitiesDecreaseIncreaseCredit Balance
    Owner's EquityDecreaseIncreaseCredit Balance
    RevenueDecreaseIncreaseCredit Balance
    ExpenseIncreaseDecreaseDebit Balance
    DrawIncreaseDecreaseDebit Balance

To change your fiscal year end date and lock the previous year down

  1. Go to Settings, Business settings.
  2. Under Financial Settings, click Fiscal Year.
  3. In the Year End Date field, enter the last day of the new fiscal year.
  4. If you want to stop people from entering transactions before a certain date, enter it in the Year End Lockdown field. For example, if your year ends on 12/31/2021, enter 01/01/2022.
  5. Click Save.

If you lock down the previous fiscal year, you can't enter any transactions at all for that year. If later you realize that you need to enter a transaction in that year, delete the year end lock down date.