Month End Procedures

At the beginning of each accounting month the FIS team close the previous month on FIS and open the new month.  This always requires a short outage because it is important that no transactions are in process during the opening and closing routines. Any transactions input while these system processes are running would either be recorded in the wrong month or, worse, may be corrupted.

The separation of the accounting year into accounting periods is necessary in order to produce meaningful reports and comparative statistics and is essential for the routine reconciliation of data within the accounting sub-ledgers, Accounts Payable, Purchase Ordering, Inventory and Accounts Receivable, with the General Ledger.  Successful reconciliation of these is one of the key checks we need to do to ensure that the system is posting data correctly.

There is a published schedule for producing the monthly reports.  The Month End Timetable sets a standard of 5 working days after month-end for the production and circulation of reports and specifies the lead-times of the various processes involved in order for that to be achieved. Please note the different extended month-end deadlines which apply to the VAT quarter-end months, October, January, April and July.  In these months the Accounts Receivable module has to be left open for 2 to 3 days longer to ensure that all VAT-able income due is recorded in the correct period.

Monthly Deadlines
The plan attached assumes the following fixed dates and turnaround times:

Month-end system closure (for Payables, Receivables and Inventory) - will always be 8am to 10.30 am on the 1st calendar day of the month, unless the 1st falls on a weekend, in which case it will start at 8am on the following Monday.  [Please note that sometimes the outage is extended in order for Management Systems to carry out vital updates to the system.  Users will be informed if this is the case].

1 working day will be allocated after the system closure day for all General Ledger journals (including budgets) to be uploaded and posted.  The timetable also allows an extra day in addition to this for all banking journals to be posted. Where possible this will be avoided and the reports will be run on the second working day of the month.  The deadline for all non-banking journals is therefore the end of the 1st working day of the month.  FIS updates the transactions and balances tables used to produce the reports at 9pm daily.  Any data un-entered or un-posted at 9pm of the second working day after month-end will not be recorded in the printed reports.  

The Transactions and Balances reports will be run on the third day after month-end (on the 3rd if banking journals have to be posted on the second day).   2 working days are allowed for running and printing these.  In the light of system/printer failure the remaining timetable could be delayed.

The distribution of the printed reports will begin on the 5th working day after the month-end system closure or whenever the printing is complete. 

Quarterly (VAT) Deadlines

Payables, Purchasing and Inventory modules to follow normal month-end system closure deadlines (see above).

Receivables transactions to follow slightly extended deadlines as follow:

1 extra working day allowed by departments for the submission to Accounts Payable/Commercial and Taxation and Treasury of all SINV, SREC and SREN batches for entry in the old quarter. 5pm at the end of that day will be the deadline for their receipt in Central Finance department.  

After closure date for receipt of batches 3 days will be allowed for authorisation and data processing. (NB:  This is a tight deadline. It assumes and will not work unless the flow of work is managed well. Completed batches need to be sent through to Data Processing for final input as and when completed by Cash desk/Tax and Commercial rather than sent over en masse on the final day)

Accounts receivable module closed on 5pm on 4th working day after month-end.
       
All GL/journal input by default has an extended deadline of 4 additional days for inputting journals into the old month.

All GL journals must be posted before the final system update of the tables at 9pm on the 4th working day of the new month or it will not appear in the distributed reports until the following month.
 
Year End Deadlines
A separate timetable for Year-end arrangements will be issued at the normal time covering the period from the end of July to early October, when special procedures and timescales apply.

This page last modified June 3, 2011 by Web Editor