How to process a month end

Summary

The following steps will take you through what to do for your Platinum month end process step by step.

More Information

If you are running the full accounts system there are various procedures you have to go through at the end of a financial period (in Platinum this is one calendar month) to produce your end of month reports and to allow you to close off a period and move into the next financial period.

The majority of these Platinum processes will produce printouts. Please make sure your printer is switched on, is loaded with paper and is on line if you intend to commit these reports to hard copy. You can of course print these to any of your available Platinum or Windows printers which may include a PDF printer if you don't want physical copies of the information.

Some reports cannot be reprinted once they have been accepted. Therefore it is important to check you have a complete printout or file before accepting these reports.

If you wish to seek advice on printing reports to file, allowing you to view and reprint reports at a later date, please see How do I Setup Printing to PDF in Platinum? or Contact your Platinum dealer or our support team on 0116 230 1500 or by using our website support contact page for advice.

Steps to Follow:

Please follow each of the steps listed below in order and following the menu instructions for each one:

Reports & Settings

Check the Financial Period is set to the month you wish to close off.

Financial Period Check

Go to " Reports & Settings Set New Financial Period".

• Set the financial period to the one you wish to close.

Exit the " Reports & Settings" menu.

Sales Ledger

After the last Sales Invoice for the month is complete, the following reports may be extracted:

Daybook Listing

Go to " Sales Ledger Daybook Listing".

• This will give an audit trail for the postings to the Nominal Ledger and forms one very important part of your V.A.T. records.
• The "Start date" will default to the start of your Financial year. This ensures that any transactions which have been posted back into a closed period are updated into the current month. You should not change this date.

This part of the month end MUST be run with the "Update Nominal" option set to [Yes] to see the Sales Ledger figures on the " Trial Balance". For more information on this, see here and here.

Make sure you have a complete printout before accepting the Daybook.

Aged Debtors Listing

Go to " Sales Ledger Aged Debtors Listing".

To print the " Aged Debtors Listing" as at the end of the current financial period so that you can reconcile it to the Sales Control account on the balance sheet at the same point, use the following procedure.

• Select the [Calculational] Tab.
• Set "Ignore Documents Beyond Current Accounting Period" to 'Y' for Yes.
• Click [Print] to print the debt list. The heading on the print out will read 'Aged Debt List At DD/MM/CCYY', where the date shown will be the last day of the current financial period.

Specific Month Centre Report

Go to the " Sales Ledger Maintenance Options Sales Centre Maintenance Print Monthly Turnover".

• Select " Specific Months Report" and then select the month to produce the report for and choose [Print].

Exit the " Sales Ledger" menu.

Purchase Ledger

After the last Purchase Ledger Invoice for the month has been received and posted onto the system or you have reached an appropriate cut-off point, the following reports may be extracted:

Daybook Listing

Go to the " Purchase Ledger Daybook Listing".

• This will give an audit trail for the postings to the Nominal Ledger and forms one very important part of your V.A.T. records.
• The "Start date" will default to the start of your Financial year. This ensures that any transactions which have been posted back into a closed period are updated into the current month. You should not change this date.

This part of the month end MUST be run with the "Update Nominal" option set to [Yes] to see the Purchase Ledger figures on the " Trial Balance". For more information on this, see here and here.

Make sure you have a complete printout before accepting the Daybook.

Aged Creditors List

Go to " Purchase Ledger Aged Creditors Listing".

To print the " Aged Creditors Listing" as at the end of the current financial period so that you can reconcile it to the Purchase Control account on the balance sheet at the same point, use the following procedure:

• Select the [Calculational] Tab.
• Set "Ignore Documents Beyond Current Accounting Period" to 'Y' for Yes.
• Click [Print] to print the creditors list. The heading on the print out will read 'Aged Creditors List At DD/MM/CCYY', where the date will be the last day of the current financial period.

Specific Month Centre Report

Go to " Purchase Ledger Maintenance Options Purchase Centre Maintenance Print Monthly Turnover Specific Months Report".

• Select the month to produce the report and choose [Print].

Exit the " Purchase Ledger" menu.

Reports & Settings

The following report needs to be run from the Reports & Settings menu.

Monthly Audit & Cashbook

Go to " Reports & Settings Reports Monthly Audit & Cashbook Normal Monthly Audit".

• Press <Enter> to use the Current Accounting Period as the month to audit.

This option produces two reports. The V.A.T. Audit, which forms another very important part of your V.A.T. records, and a Cashbook. They will appear to print on paper as one document, the V.A.T. Audit Trail followed by the Cashbook.

When printing to file, you will need to save two separate files, one for the Monthly Audit print and one for the Cashbook. This is because the Cashbook can be produced as a separate report. Please save both with suitable filenames e.g. 'Monthly Audit <Mth><Yr>' and 'Cashbook <Mth><Yr>'.

If you get a message that there is UNPROCESSED DATA for previous months, press <Enter> to continue and [Accept] or [Ignore] the report that you have just run. The unprocessed data is dealt with in the next section, and should consist of documents received late after the relevant month end has been run.

Make sure you have a complete printout before accepting the Normal Monthly Audit.

Unprocessed Data

Go back to the " Monthly Audit & Cashbook" and select " Audit For Months Before a Given Date".

• Press <Enter> to use the same date as for the " Normal Monthly Audit" and this will process any data which has fallen into previous months so has not been through the Monthly Audit report.

Make sure you have a complete printout before accepting the Audit For Months Before a Given Date report.

Exit the " Reports & Settings" menu.

Nominal Ledger

The following reports/processes need to be run from the Nominal Ledger menu.

Trial Balance

Go to " Nominal Ledger Trial Balance".

• When the report is on the screen, press <F2> to print the Trial Balance. This allows you to check balances on each Nominal Code especially for the major control accounts, e.g. Current Bank Account, Cash in Hand, Sales & Purchase Control and V.A.T. Outstanding.

Profit & Loss Report

This option is printout only.

Go to " Nominal Ledger Profit & Loss Run Profit & Loss Report".

• Once you have a complete report, move on to the next step.

Balance Sheet

This option is also printout only.

Go to " Nominal Ledger Balance Sheet Balance Sheet".

• Once you have a complete report, move on to the next step.

Exit the " Nominal Ledger" menu.

Reports & Settings

The following reports/processes need to be run from Reports & Settings.

The V.A.T. Report need only be run at the end of the quarter, but feel free to look at it as often as you wish!

V.A.T. Reports

Go to " Reports & Settings Reports V.A.T. Reports".

• The "Period Ending" should show the month and year as at the end of the current VAT period.
• Click [OK] to open the VAT Report.

The report will be shown on screen. See this article for instructions on actually closing the VAT quarter.

Final Financial Period Change

Go to " Reports & Settings Set New Financial Period".

• Move the Financial Period on to the next month in the financial year.
• Ensure that you press <Enter> to select the new period.

Exit the " Reports & Settings" menu.

Optional Customer/Supplier History Cleardown

Sales Ledger

The cleardown will clear all transactions from the Sales Ledger which have been fully processed. They are then archived and stored in Document History (provided the "Transaction Archive Setting" is set to 'Y').

This option is not mandatory for the month end procedure, however, if you do perform this clear down, you may find it helpful to leave the last quarter's history uncleared.

Clearing down

Go to " Sales Ledger Cleardown".

• Press <F2> to clear down all the complete documents.

This routine may take quite a long time to complete, so ensure that you have plenty of time in which to do this. This removes from the system all transactions with zero balances that have had all the necessary analysis done on them and either puts them into the transaction archives or eliminates them into free space. In most cases, they will be archived and can be retrieved using the " Transaction Archives" option in " Reports & Settings". It is nevertheless useful to have a full system backup.

If you are on the final month of your financial year, you will need to close the year off and move into the new year (i.e. be on the first month of the new year) before you will be able to do the clear down for the last month. For help on how to do this, click here.

Exit the " Sales Ledger" menu.

Purchase Ledger

The clear down will clear all transactions from the Purchase Ledger which have been fully processed. They are then archived and stored in Document History (provided the "Transaction Archive Setting" is set to 'Y').

This option is not mandatory for the month end procedure, however, if you do perform this clear down, you may find it helpful to leave the last quarter's history uncleared.

Clearing down

Go to " Purchase Ledger Cleardown".

• Press <F2> to clear down all the complete documents.

This routine may take quite a long time to complete, so ensure that you have plenty of time in which to do this. This removes from the system all transactions with zero balances that have had all the necessary analysis done on them and either puts them into the transaction archives or eliminates them into free space. In most cases, they will be archived and can be retrieved using the " Transaction Archives" option in " Reports & Settings". It is nevertheless useful to have a full system backup.

If you are on the final month of your financial year, you will need to close the year off and move into the new year (i.e. be on the first month of the new year) before you will be able to do the clear down for the last month. For help on how to do this, click here.

Exit the " Purchase Ledger" menu.

See also

• What should I consider at month end?
• How do I Process a Year end?
• Clearing any unprocessed transactions at a year end
• Month end Vehicle Integration to Nominal Ledger.
• Stock Integration to the Nominal Ledger
• How do I send a Printout to a File?
• How do I Setup Printing to PDF in Platinum?

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Keywords AND Misspellings

Month, end, daybook, audit, debt list, nominal, update, VAT, V.A.T., period, VAT period, closedown, cleardown