Changing the Fiscal Month

Modified on Thu, 27 Apr 2017 at 03:16 PM

Design Manager Pro records entries using a fiscal month or fiscal period which is entirely separate from the calendar date of the entry.  The fiscal month designates the period to which the entry is posted into the accounts of the General Ledger.   There are no issues when changing the fiscal month and moving it forward (to a future period) since there is no accounting recorded in the future period.  The months from the end of the old period until the new period will have zero activity.

It is much more difficult to move the fiscal month backward.  Design Manager recommends moving the month forward if at all possible.  When the month must be moved backward all balances for each period must be zeroed out and moved to the last month prior to the move.  For example:  If work ends in fiscal month 03/2006 and the month needs to be moved so that the next month is 01/2006 then a trial balance needs to be run for month 03/2006, a journal entry needs to be put in to reverse or zero every account and is posted to 03/2006.  Another JE is put into 12/2005 that is the exact reverse of the 03/2006 entry, this moves the G/L balances from 03/2006 to the prior year in which they belong under the new fiscal month arrangement.  After 03/2006 is zeroed, then do the same for 02/2006 and then 01/2006.  Note that this does not move the actual transactions but only gets the balances to be correct.  There is no way to move the actual transactions.  In our example you will see transactions from old fiscal 01/2006 and new 01/2006, the only way to tell the difference is by the calendar date of each entry.  This is a side effect that must be dealt with until moving past the next fiscal period without activity (04/2006 in our example).