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R12 Accounting Period Control within GL

R12 has introduced multiple enhancements for controlling accounting periods. Opening and closing accounting periods allow ledger control over journal entry posting. This process also computes period-end and year-end actual and budget account balances for reporting purposes. This blog will explore some of the new features within R12.

Simultaneously Opening and Closing Period for Multiple Ledgers

When using the Open and Close period form within General Ledger you are only able to control a single period at a time. You can however, select which ledger you wish to control a period for without the need to change responsibility. You now also have the ability to simultaneously open and close multiple accounting periods. Simply by creating a ledger set you no longer have to open and close periods for each ledger separately by switching responsibilities. A ledger set can contain any number of ledgers as long as each of the selected ledgers share the same chart of account and calendar. By virtue of sharing the same calendar, the ledgers will also share the same period type. You are now able to run any of the following open and close period programs from the concurrent manager to open and close periods simultaneously.

• Open Period
  Used to open periods up to and including the specified target period for one or more ledgers
• Periods – Close Period
  Used to close a single period for one or more ledgers. Only open periods can be closed. A warning message will appear in the close period program if unposted journals exist.
• Periods – Gapless Close Period
  Used to close a consecutive range of open periods for one or more ledgers. This program closes the specified period and all prior periods that are still open.
• Periods – Permanently Close Period
  Used to permanently close one or more closed periods for one or more ledgers. To permanently close a range of closed periods, the specified period and any prior periods must have a status of Closed or Permanently Closed.

WARNING: Should you wish to permanently close a period, all prior periods will also be permanently closed which means that they can never be re-opened.

By controlling multiple GL periods processing efficiencies can easily be gained. By using the concurrent programs above, a business can also make use of the various concurrent program options available such as scheduling and building request sets. Another benefit of this new functionality is the fact that you can now keep periods across multiple ledgers in sync, which is particularly useful for shared service centre operations.

Note: You must have access to the full ledger or all balancing segment values and management segment values to control accounting periods within GL.

MultiPeriod Accounting using Sub Ledger Accounting

The introduction of Sub Ledger Account (SLA) within R12 introduced ‘Multiperiod Accounting’ which enables organisations to create accounting entries for a single accounting event for more than one GL period. This functionality is primarily used to recognise revenue or record a prepaid expense/ revenue across multiple GL accounting periods. To make use of this feature, various Multiperiod accounting setup steps are required in SLA before transactions are entered providing Multiperiod accounting information. The ‘Create Accounting Program’ can then be submitted.

I hope you find this useful, any questions please reply to this post.

15 Jul, 2012 by Ian Boyling

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