Financial Period / Posting Dates

Summary

This article describes the Financial Period feature in EngageIP and how to configure and use Financial Periods.

Description

The financial period settings allows you to define and close periods for financial reporting. You can define the fiscal year, fiscal quarter and fiscal month which can then be used in reports using the filter options.

As shown below, the year is any 12 month designation, this may or may not be a calendar year for your organization. Then a quarter represented by green for Jan, Feb and Mar in this case, and finally the current fiscal month, represented by the pink month of March.

Open

As in the image below, the month is April, you will be able to post transactions only to open periods, so you will not be able to enter posting dates less then April 1. Any date from April 1 onward (and beyond the end of April in this case) is valid.

Financial periods are usually monthly as books are closed on periods for reporting purposes.

Open

Creating Financial Periods

The following guidelines describe a monthly period for closing books. Your business may require more or less frequent book closures and should be adjusted as necessary.

1. Click Setup

2. Click Financial Settings

3. Click the Add button to configure the first period (required fields are in red)

   Note: that this first period may cover a previous period, or you may need to configure a series of previous periods. For example, if the year is 2019 and you need to create and report on monthly periods starting in January 2019, you can create them and close them one by one until you have them all created including a current open period

   • Name - this should be a descriptive name for your financial period

   • Start Date - when entering the very first period you will be asked to configure the start date (for example Jan 1st). This should be the first month in your fiscal year

   • End Date - the end date for the configured period

   • Fiscal Year - this can be a number or a code, e.g. FY-2020

   • Fiscal Quarter - the name of the quarter (if used), e.g. Q1 or Q1-JAN

   • Fiscal Month - the name of the fiscal month, e.g. FM-JAN, JAN-15

   • Financial Period Status - used to set the period as Open or Closed. Previous periods will be configured as Closed. The only period you will leave open will be the current period
     Note: you can only ever have one open period

4. Click Save

5. Review the list of periods to confirm they are named accurately and reflect your period requirements

6. Review your sales report as an example to see the transactions listed and labeled with your newly defined periods

Closing Periods

1. Click Setup

2. Click Financial Settings

3. Click on the Name of the existing open period

4. Set the Financial Period Status as 'Closed'

5. Click Save

6. The Add Financial Settings page will load, enter information for the new period

7. Click Save

Scenario / Example

Scenario: Applying a charge reversal to a closed period.

The current month is April and the periods are monthly. Transactions were entered in March for the month of March and the March period was closed. A charge needs to be reversed and have that reversal show within the March period. You would not be able to post to the March period because it is closed. Your books for March and previous to that are considered closed.

Resolution: The correct resolution to this is to reverse the transaction and have the reversal appear in the April period. If you require that the reversal be assigned to the March period, you will need to 'open the books' for that period. To do that you would need to first delete the April period, then delete the March period, create the transaction with the required posting date in March, then create the financial periods again and close the March period again.

Creating a Transaction with a Posting Date

The following applies to charges, payments and credits

1. Load the customer account and click on the Transactions page

2. Click Add in the appropriate section to add a charge, payment or credit

3. Enter the details for the charge, payment or credit as normal

4. Select the posting date (by default the posting date will be today, a.k.a. the active period)

5. Click Save

Viewing Transactions within a Financial Period

To view transactions within a period, you can review the financial reports on the Reports page. As an example you can see below that the report displays the values entered in your financial period settings according to the posting date of the transaction. The report can then be filtered by the fiscal year, fiscal quarter, or fiscal month (see the article Reports – Filtering and Sorting Techniques for information on how to filter data on reports).

Opening Closed Periods

Opening closed periods should be a rare occurrence, in the event that you need to, please follow the steps below:

1. In the AdminPortal click Setup

2. Click Financial Settings

3. In the Select column click the box beside the most recent period

4. Click the Delete button

5. Continue deleting the periods until the closed period that you need to enter a transaction in is removed

6. Proceed to enter the transaction as required with the posting date required

7. Create and close the periods again

Deleting Financial Settings

To remove or recreate financial periods, you first need to delete what is existing. To do that, perform the following:

1. Load the Financial Settings page for each branded owner or top owner

2. Check the box beside the most recent period entered

3. Click the Delete button

4. Continue one by one until all in list are removed

5. Complete this on all owners as necessary and as far back as necessary