Purpose

Fiscal Years are used to separate the accounting years from each other. A country's legal authority have various rules about how these Fiscal Years should be setup. A Fiscal Year often follow a normal Calendar Year, Jan 01 - Dec 31. But it could also be a broken year, f.i. Jul 01 - Jun 30. Many countries allow you to have an initial prolonged year, f.i. Jul 01 2009 - Dec 31 2010.

Procedure

Note that you create a new Fiscal Year by selecting Setup tab, Fiscal Years (you also close a Fiscal Year here) and you set the active Fiscal Year by selecting Setup tab, Company Setup.

When you start a new Company, you should check that the Fiscal Year is setup correctly. If this is not your starting Fiscal Year, then you should start by creating the starting Fiscal Year. After you have corrected the starting Fiscal Year, you can delete other Fiscal Years if there are no transactions in them. Now set this new Fiscal Year on your company by selecting Setup tab, Company Setup.

If the first year is setup as Jan 01 2011 - Dec 31 2011 and your starting Fiscal Year should be Jul 01 2011 - Jun 30 2012:

  • Create a short dummy year, Jan 01 2012 - Jun 30 2012
  • Create another Year Jul 01 2012 - Jun 30 2013
  • Set the company to use this year
  • Close and delete the year Jan 01 2011 - Dec 31 2011
  • Close and delete the short dummy year Jan 01 2012 - Jun 30 2012
  • Create the correct broken Fiscal Year Jul 01 2011 - Jun 30 2012
  • Set this Fiscal Year Jul 01 2011 - Jun 30 2012 as active for the company

You are now ready to make your transactions. You have 2 fiscal years and you are using the current (Jul 01 2011 - Jun 30 2012) one, whilst the later one (Jul 01 2012 - Jun 30 2013) is not current.

  • When you reach the end of your Fiscal Year, you have to create another new Fiscal Year.
  • When you want to switch Fiscal Year on your company, go into company setup and do that.
  • You will now be able to post to the current or past year:
    • Your document numbers will increase irrespective of the fiscal year you process in.
    • Change the process date to be in the correct fiscal year.
  • When you have finished your year-end entries, you may close the Fiscal Year.
  • A closed Fiscal Year can no longer be used for entries.
  • When a Fiscal Year is closed, the difference between all asset and liability accounts are brought forward as a Journal Entry where the Default account for Retained Earnings is credited if this is a profit and debited if there is a loss. And the default account for Profit/Loss Year is debited if this is a profit, and credited if there is a loss).

You can have as many Fiscal Years running as you want, but for performance reasons you should not have more than needed (by your legislations). When you delete a Fiscal Year, the assets, liabilities and equities are brought forward. All other unneeded transactions such as documents are deleted.

Tips and Tricks

In a newly setup company, we can change the fiscal year in the table X_fiscal_year where X is the company index number in the array $db_connections in the config_db.php. This can be done using any MySQL client like phpMyAdmin, SQLyog, etc.,.

Deleting a Fiscal Year - Forum Post

This is what happens when we delete a Fiscal Year:

  1. Backup is done
  2. All sales orders and details, up to last date, that are fully delivered are removed. Attachments are removed.
  3. All purchase orders and details, up to last date, that are fully received are removed. Attachments are removed.
  4. All GRN receivals, up to last date, are removed.
  5. All debtor trans and details, up to last date, that are fully allocated are removed. Attachments are removed.
  6. All cust allocations, up to last date, are removed.
  7. All supp trans and details, up to last date, that are fully allocated are removed. Attachments are removed.
  8. All supp allocations, up to last date, are removed.
  9. All workorders, up to last date, and closed. 
   a. All workorder issues are removed. Attachments are removed.
   b. All workorder manufacture are removed. 
   c. All workorder requirements are removed.
   d. Workorders removed. Attachments are removed.
  1. All stock moves, up to last date, are removed and converted to a closing stock move.
  2. All voided items, up to last date, are removed.
  3. All trans tax details, up to last date, are removed.
  4. All exchange rater, up to last date, are removed.
  5. All cust and supp sub gl transactions are retrieved by account, removed and an end transaction are inserted.
  6. All bank trans, up to last date, are removed and converted to a closing balance trans.
  7. All ausit trail, up to last date, are removed.
  8. All comments, up to last date, are removed.
  9. Finally the fiscalyear is removed.