After the Session: Top Tips & Processes For End of Year Audit Prep
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This was a whirl wind of a session! We covered so much; such as reports for reconciling accounts payable to the general ledger, fiscal year management, business rules and tips on how to resolve common issues. I encourage everyone who handles end of the year process to take a look. We had a solid hour of content and we hope you enjoyed the session!
Now for the Q&A so you can see what other's had to say!
Q: Does a hard close delete transactions so that we cannot go back and look at them?
A: No, you'll always be able to go back and look at the Income Statement side. The option to Summarize Fiscal years wipes out the detail. We rarely if ever recommend that which is why we didn't discuss it.
Q: I have imported files from an old system for a prior fiscal year. Should it be posted before hard closing?
A: All transactions have to be posted before we're able to hard close.
Q: I'm new in this position, but if the current year ending balances for the prior year match to the audited numbers, is there any reason why I should not hard close the years prior (under the assumption that they are correct)?
A: Nope, if you can confirm that everything is posted and our reports tie to our audited financials than we should close the years.
Q: Can I do a hard close fiscal year if a user forgets to log-out correctly from Financial Edge? I tried optimizing fiscal years and could not do it because 3 users were still signed in at midnight. Can I kick them out if I have supervisor rights in FE?
A: Hard closing and optimizing is an exclusive process which mean everyone needs to be signed out. You can reach out to support and schedule a time for them to manually kick everyone out (including users who are just stuck) so that you can perform the exclusive process. When reaching out to support reference this article and they'll be able to help https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Knowledge/63336
Q: If I click the Transaction box for "Do not allow journal codes to be edited when posting from other BB systems" you discussed this for AP code. I get that.. .but it looks like this is all or nothing... for all codes right?
A: Correct
Q: Regarding the suggestion to have business rules not allow post dates to be different than transaction dates in other Blackbaud systems, what about a situation where a vendor invoices us in December, for example, for January rent. The invoice date is truly December, but we don't want the expense to post in the GL until January.
A: That boils down more to how our organization wants to recognize revenue and expenses. In that instance I would have the invoice and post date be for January over having it dated in December. That's because the expense are actually being incurred in January and Not December.
That's a very good example though
Q: Does Blackbaud ever recommend not hard closing and just optimizing each year instead?
A: No, Optimizing should only ever be a temporary option.
Q: Does optimizing or hard closing change your data in the system to be something different than what is seen in a pre-close balance sheet?
A: No, it just changes the way the bank end of the system processes. The front end number should stay the same.
Thank you to everyone that attended!
Click Here to watch the Session On Demand!
Now for the Q&A so you can see what other's had to say!
Q: Does a hard close delete transactions so that we cannot go back and look at them?
A: No, you'll always be able to go back and look at the Income Statement side. The option to Summarize Fiscal years wipes out the detail. We rarely if ever recommend that which is why we didn't discuss it.
Q: I have imported files from an old system for a prior fiscal year. Should it be posted before hard closing?
A: All transactions have to be posted before we're able to hard close.
Q: I'm new in this position, but if the current year ending balances for the prior year match to the audited numbers, is there any reason why I should not hard close the years prior (under the assumption that they are correct)?
A: Nope, if you can confirm that everything is posted and our reports tie to our audited financials than we should close the years.
Q: Can I do a hard close fiscal year if a user forgets to log-out correctly from Financial Edge? I tried optimizing fiscal years and could not do it because 3 users were still signed in at midnight. Can I kick them out if I have supervisor rights in FE?
A: Hard closing and optimizing is an exclusive process which mean everyone needs to be signed out. You can reach out to support and schedule a time for them to manually kick everyone out (including users who are just stuck) so that you can perform the exclusive process. When reaching out to support reference this article and they'll be able to help https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Knowledge/63336
Q: If I click the Transaction box for "Do not allow journal codes to be edited when posting from other BB systems" you discussed this for AP code. I get that.. .but it looks like this is all or nothing... for all codes right?
A: Correct
Q: Regarding the suggestion to have business rules not allow post dates to be different than transaction dates in other Blackbaud systems, what about a situation where a vendor invoices us in December, for example, for January rent. The invoice date is truly December, but we don't want the expense to post in the GL until January.
A: That boils down more to how our organization wants to recognize revenue and expenses. In that instance I would have the invoice and post date be for January over having it dated in December. That's because the expense are actually being incurred in January and Not December.
That's a very good example though
Q: Does Blackbaud ever recommend not hard closing and just optimizing each year instead?
A: No, Optimizing should only ever be a temporary option.
Q: Does optimizing or hard closing change your data in the system to be something different than what is seen in a pre-close balance sheet?
A: No, it just changes the way the bank end of the system processes. The front end number should stay the same.
Thank you to everyone that attended!
Click Here to watch the Session On Demand!
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Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® Blog
12/21/2020 1:23pm EST
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