Year-end Procedures Overview

Preparing to close your fiscal year or payroll year
Printing year-end payroll forms
Closing a fiscal year and starting a new one
Optimizing and verifying your data file

At the end of each fiscal year, you’ll need to perform a few extra tasks to prepare your MYOB system for the coming year. If you’re using MYOB Payroll, you’ll need to take some additional steps--such as printing W-2 forms and 1099 statements--each January, as well.

For many companies, the fiscal year and the calendar year are the same. That is, their business year begins on January 1st and ends on December 31st. Other companies choose to begin their fiscal year at some other time; for example, businesses whose sales are cyclical often choose to start the fiscal year during a slower time of the sales cycle, so the year-end closing process doesn’t interfere with their sales efforts at a busier time of the year.

Preparing to close your fiscal year or payroll year

Although we refer to the activities in this part as “year-end” tasks, you could also think of them as “year-beginning” tasks, since they usually are performed in the first month of the new year and are meant to prepare you for the new year. Here is a small amount of background information about the tasks you should perform before you begin closing a fiscal or payroll year.

Note: When your years must be closed

Payroll In Accounting Plus the payroll year must be closed before you can record the first paycheck for the new payroll year.

To learn the current payroll year of your Accounting Plus data file and other general payroll information, choose General Payroll Information from the Setup menu.

Fiscal Accounting Plus doesn’t require that you close your fiscal year at any particular time. You can continue to use Accounting Plus for up to 12 months after the last month of your current fiscal year without concern, since Accounting Plus allows you to track information for the previous, current and next fiscal years. (If you don’t close your fiscal year at the end of your current fiscal year, you won’t be able to print current information on some reports, however.)

To learn the current fiscal year of your Accounting Plus data file, choose Company Information from the Setup menu. This window also displays the last Month in Fiscal Year, the number of Accounting Periods per year and the Conversion Month. The Conversion Month is the first month you started making entries in Accounting Plus.

To the best of your ability, be sure that all transactions for the year that’s ending are entered in MYOB Accounting Plus before you begin closing the year. That way, you can avoid making adjusting General Journal entries in the new year, and your yearly records will be more accurate, making it easier for you to compare your company’s performance from one year to the next. If you have an accountant who produces your year-end financial reports, you may need to wait for your accountant to provide you with any adjusting entries that may be needed.

Before you close the payroll year, complete all pay runs and print year-end forms.

Another very important task you must complete before you close a fiscal year or payroll year is to perform a backup. After you start a new fiscal or payroll year, the only way to view the detail of transactions that were purged from the data file during the start a new year process is to restore a backup of the data file. For more information see To make a backup and To restore a backup.

We also recommend that you optimize and verify your data files for errors before you begin the process to start a new payroll or fiscal year. Optimizing and verifying your data file can catch minor inconsistencies in your company’s data file before they cause serious problems. For more information see Optimizing data files and Verifying data files.

Printing year-end payroll forms

You can use Accounting Plus to print W-2 forms for your employees and 1099 statements for your vendors to use at tax time. Information for W-2 forms and 1099 statements is tracked using the Current Payroll Year for your data file. To learn the current payroll year of your Accounting Plus data file and other general payroll information, choose General Payroll Information from the Setup menu.

You must print W-2 forms and 1099 statements before you close the payroll year and begin the new one. We strongly recommend that you make a backup of your Accounting Plus data file after printing these statements and before closing the year. Once the year is closed, detailed payroll information is no longer available and W-2 forms and other reports can’t be printed for that year. If you’ve made a backup, however, you can restore that backup and print the necessary documents.

We also recommend that you make multiple backups of your data file, that is, more than one copy of your data file at different locations. The purpose of multiple backups is simple: backups can fail as easily as computers. If the backed-up file is damaged, you're in just as much trouble as you would be without any backup at all.

Click below for step-by-step procedures:

To print W-2 forms

To print 1099 statements

Backing up your MYOB Accounting Plus data file

Another very important task you must complete before you close a fiscal year or payroll year is to perform a backup. After you start a new fiscal or payroll year, the only way to view the detail of transactions that were purged from the data file during the start a new year process is to restore a backup of the data file.

To ensure that the backup you make is a reliable backup, we recommend, that as a test, you restore the backup before you start the new fiscal year or payroll year in your data file.

We also recommend that you make multiple backups of your data file, that is, more than one copy of your data file at different locations. The purpose of multiple backups is simple: backups can fail as easily as computers. If the backed-up file is damaged, you're in just as much trouble as you would be without any backup at all.

Click below for step-by-step procedures:

To make a backup

To restore a backup

Closing a fiscal year and starting a new one

Closing a fiscal year is an important process in Accounting Plus, in which a number of tasks are performed to officially close the year that’s just ended and to prepare for the new year. Fortunately, Accounting Plus takes care of nearly all these processes automatically.

When you’ve entered all the information that’s required for a fiscal year, you’re ready to close the year and start a new fiscal year. To learn the current fiscal year of your Accounting Plus data file and other information about your company, choose Company Information from the Setup menu. This window also displays the last Month in Fiscal Year, the number of Accounting Periods per year and the Conversion Month. (The Conversion Month is the first month you started making entries in Accounting Plus.)

Things that happen when you start a new fiscal year include:

  • The previous fiscal year’s monthly totals for all accounts are changed to “last year” categories. If “last year” amounts already existed, those amounts will be replaced.
  • All closed sales, closed purchases and journal entries assigned to closed sales and closed purchases are purged.
  • The balance of your current-year earnings account is transferred to your retained earnings account.
  • The balances of your income, cost of sales, expense, other income and other expense accounts are returned to zero.
  • If you wish, the new fiscal year can be changed so it ends in a different month than the previous fiscal year. (If you choose to make this change, check with an accountant about how to report information for a “short” fiscal year.)
  • If you wish, the new fiscal year can be changed so it contains 13 accounting periods. If your previous fiscal year used 13 periods but you didn’t make any entries in the 13th period, you can also change your new fiscal year so it contains only 12 accounting periods

Things that don’t happen when you start a new fiscal year include:

  • Journal entries assigned to open invoices or sales or purchase orders aren’t purged.
  • Journal entries assigned to reimbursable expenses that haven’t been reimbursed aren’t purged.
  • Transactions that haven’t been reconciled using the Reconcile Accounts window aren’t purged.
  • Contact log entries aren’t purged.
  • Any information dated in the new fiscal year isn’t changed.
Idea: Make a reference copy of your data file before closing the year
Since closed transactions are purged during the year-end closing process, many MYOB software users choose to make a copy of their MYOB software data file that will be stored on their computer’s hard disk so that the previous year’s transactions will be easily accessible. (In effect, they are creating a historical copy of their data file.) If you choose to do this, we recommend that you rename the historical data file to reflect the fiscal year included in the file. For example, if your data file is named MYDATA.PLS, you might name the historical file MYDATA00.PLS. Once the historical data file has been renamed, you can store it in the same directory as your working data file.

For more information see To make a backup and To restore a backup.

Click below for step-by-step procedures:

To close a fiscal year

To make a backup

To restore a backup

Closing a payroll year and starting a new one

When you close a payroll year, all pay history amounts from the year you close are cleared from your data file, and your data file is prepared for a new payroll year.

Since W-2 and 1099 information is tracked using pay history, you must print W-2 forms and 1099 statements before you close the previous payroll year and start the new one. To learn the current payroll year of your Accounting Plus data file and other general payroll information, choose General Payroll Information from the Setup menu. For more information see To print W-2 forms and To print 1099 statements.

We strongly recommend that you make a backup of your Accounting Plus data file after printing these statements and before closing the year. Once the year is closed, detailed payroll information is no longer available and W-2 forms and other reports can’t be printed for that year. If you’ve made a backup, however, you can restore that backup and print the necessary documents.

We also recommend that you make multiple backups of your data file, that is, more than one copy of your data file at different locations. The purpose of multiple backups is simple: backups can fail as easily as computers. If the backed-up file is damaged, you're in just as much trouble as you would be without any backup at all. For more information see To make a backup and To restore a backup .

Click below for a step-by-step procedure:

To close a payroll year

Optimizing and verifying your data file

After you start a new fiscal or payroll year, we recommend that you optimize and verify your data file. Optimizing your data file reduces your data file's size and makes your data file more efficient. The Verify Data File utility ensures that your data file is in “healthy” working condition.

The amount of time needed to optimize and verify a data file for use with Accounting Plus depends upon the size of the file and the capabilities of the workstation you’re using. If you have a very large data file and a slower computer with little memory, be prepared for optimization and verification to take some time.

Click below for step-by-step procedures:

To optimize a data file

To verify your data file

Keyword: Start a new year

Year-end Procedures Overview