Saasu is a multi-year file so it’s quite an easy close off process. Lock the transactions in your file up to your end of financial year and posting your current earnings to retained earnings are all that most people will need to do. Saasu doesn’t purge out old transaction once close off has occurred so there is no need to rollover.
Saasu’s reports are sensitive to the dates you run them for. If you run a Profit and Loss report for a financial year, the transactions for income accounts prior to that year aren’t included. So, in effect, we don’t need to purge transactions.
The year-end process is greatly simplified in an online accounting application. At the end of the year your accountant can help you with closing entries specific to your business (if you are unfamiliar with the process).
Some Examples of Year-end Entries
- Depreciation or Appreciation of Assets. See Assets.
- Moving current earnings to retained earnings for a company using a journal entry.
- Accrual of income or expenses not yet earned or expended.
- Write-off of bad debts you may have.
Current Earnings to Retained Earnings at Year-end
The easiest way to move your current earnings to your retained earnings is to enter a journal transaction as each financial year is completed.
In Saasu, there is a built-in equity account called Current Earnings. This account is the balancing item for the Balance Sheet report. At present you can’t post to this account so you need to create another account to offset it.
Typically at year-end, your accountant would clear this account once all the checks and balances have been completed and they are ready to prepare the financial statements for your organisation.
- If you haven’t already created an Earnings account, create accounts for Equity: Current Earnings and Equity: Retained Earning.
- Select Add > Journal.
- Date the transaction to the first day of your new financial year.
- Use the Balance Sheet or Profit and Loss reports as at the last day of the financial year to get your earnings number for the year to be entered.For example, $1,500 of retained earnings (profit) relating to this financial year needs to be cleared from the Equity: Current Earnings (My Profit) account:
Account Debit Credit Equity: Current Earnings $1,500 Equity: Retained Earnings $1,500 - Save the transaction.
The resulting Balance Sheet Report would look like this:
| Account | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Equity: Current Earnings (My Profit) | 1,500 | These two accounts will be merged in a future release. |
| Equity: Current Earnings | -1,500 | |
| Equity: Retained Earnings | 1,500 | Prior year earnings |
Current Earnings to Retained Earnings clearing all GL accounts method.
You can clear all the General Ledger P&L accounts at year end with a Journal that moves the balances to Retained Earnings. Instead of the above Journal you would post each Income, Expense and Cost of Sales account (all non-balance sheet accounts) to the Retained Earnings account.
When importing from other accounting systems for multiple years then the year end process hasn’t been followed above so balances will be carrying forward. To get GL opening balances to clear it requires a Journal entry at the end of each year to clear the accounts and move the P&L result to Retained Earnings in the Balance Sheet.
TIP: We recommend not loading historical data for multiple years unless you plan to balance each year end again against your filed accounts and thus do closing journals described above as though you are closing off the books again for each year of data.