Creating a New Financial Year and Accounting Periods (v2, v4, v6)

Depending on your current system setup, you may need to create a new financial year and accounting periods. These are managed via the Period Maintenance dialog which is accessed by selecting Masters > Periods from the top menu.

If the required financial year and accounting periods are not listed, they will need to be created. If the accounting periods for the new financial year exist, and you need to open them, please see Opening the New Financial Year (v2, v4, v6).

Creating a new Financial Year

  1. Log in to IRIS Financials as CUSTADMIN/PSFADMIN then select Masters > Periods from the top menu.

  2. The Period Maintenance dialog is displayed. Click the Add button.

  1. The New Period dialog is displayed. Enter the code for the new financial year in YYYY/YY format.

  1. Click the OK button to return to the Period Maintenance dialog.

  1. Enter the required Title for the financial year e.g. Year Ended 31st August 2021. For consistency, it is advisable to retain any existing naming conventions.

  2. Select the end of the year date from the Period End calendar, e.g. 31/08/2021.

  3. Enter a short name for the new year in the Mnemonic field which is for system use only. A short name will be automatically created when the year is created if this field is left blank.

  4. If you are not yet ready to post to the new year, we recommend setting the Access Level to 8 at this stage to prevent users accidentally posting to the wrong year. You can open the year in late August by changing the Access level to 3.

    When you open the year, you will also need to open the applicable periods.

  5. Once you have completed the required information, click the Apply button. The new year will then be displayed in the list. You are now ready to create new accounting periods.

Creating Required Accounting Periods

For the year end process to be run effectively, two accounting periods need to be set up for the year that is being closed:

  • Period 98 – used to store all income and expenditure nominal balances transferred from accounting periods 01 to 12, into the current financial year surplus/deficit nominal (usually 9900).
  • Period 99 – used to store rolled forward balance sheet nominals which are then reversed into period 00 to form the new financial year opening balances.

These are used for the year end rollover process. If they do not already exist, they will need to be created. The end dates for both periods will be the last date of the year that is being closed.

Additionally, you will need to ensure that applicable accounting periods have been created for the new financial year. As a minimum, period 00 must exist as this period is used to store brought forward balances from the previous financial year.

The standard accounting period structure is as follows:

  • Period 00 - Used for the brought forward balances (end date 1st Sept)
  • Periods 01-12 - Used for transaction posting throughout the year
  • Periods 98 & 99 - Used for the year end rollover (both end date 31st August)
  • Period 97 (optional) - Used for end of year audit adjustments (similar to a period 13 - end date 31st August).

  1. Select Masters > Periods from the top menu. The Period Maintenance dialog is displayed.

  1. Click the Add button. The New Period dialog is displayed. Enter the code for the new period in YYYY/PP format.

  1. Click the OK button to return to the Period Maintenance dialog.

  1. Enter the required Title (usually the month and year), e.g. September 2020. For consistency, it is advisable to retain any previous naming conventions.
  2. Select the end of the period date from the Period End calendar, e.g. 30/09/2020. This will be the end of the calendar month for this period.
  3. If you are not yet ready to post to the new year, we recommend setting the Access Level to 8 at this stage to prevent users accidentally posting to the wrong year. You can open the year in late August by changing the Access level to 3.
  4. Once you have completed the required information, click the Apply The new period will then appear in the list as shown in the previous graphic. Continue this process until all the required accounting periods have been added.

  5. The following graphic shows a typical setup for the 2020/21 financial year together with the recommended access levels at the start of the year: