Available to Accounting Basic, Accounting Premium
In Patriot Software, you can close your accounting period at the end of your fiscal year or at another frequency that works for your business.
Closing an accounting period does the following:
Resets your temporary accounts, including income and expense accounts, to zero.
Transfers the remaining balance to the equity account you choose.
Carries the correct balances forward to the next accounting period.
When you close an accounting period, Patriot automatically creates a journal entry to bring your temporary accounts to a zero balance and close the remaining balance to your selected equity account.
How to Close an Accounting Period
You can create a closing entry for an accounting period in Patriot Software. This is usually done once a year, but you can close periods weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.
Go to Accounting > Financial Tasks > Close Period
If This Is Your First Time Closing a Period
If this is the first time you are closing an accounting period in Patriot Software:
Enter a start date.
Enter an end date.
Select the equity account where balances should be transferred.
The period you close must be one year or less.
Make sure your date range includes your earliest accounting transaction. If your selected date range does not include your earliest transaction, Patriot will show a warning with the earliest transaction date. You will need to update the date range before closing the period.
If You Have Closed a Period Before
For future period closings, Patriot will automatically set the start date to the first day after your previous closed period.
You will need to:
Enter the period end date.
Select the equity account where balances should be transferred.
Viewing Previously Closed Periods
You can view a list of previously closed periods on the Close Period page.
When you close an accounting period, Patriot creates a journal entry that brings all income and expense accounts to a zero balance. The remaining balance is posted to equity.
To review the automatic entries, click View Details.
You can also view these transactions on your General Ledger Report.
Correcting a Closed Period
If you need to enter a new transaction in a closed period, you have two options.
Option 1: Automatically Update the Closed Period
Use this option if you only need to enter a small number of transactions.
When you enter a transaction in a closed period, Patriot will show a warning. You can either cancel the transaction or continue.
If you continue, Patriot will recalculate the closing entry for that period without reopening the period.
Patriot will also update:
The General Ledger report
The closed period details
The closing entry will only change if the new transaction includes an income or expense account.
Option 2: Reopen the Closed Period
Use this option if you need to enter a larger number of transactions.
Reopening the period lets you enter transactions without seeing a warning each time.
If you need to reopen more than one closed period, you must reopen them in order, starting with the most recently closed period first.
Then, reopen earlier periods as needed.
After you finish entering your transactions, close the periods again in your accounting software, you have the option to close your accounting period at the end of your fiscal year.
Closing your accounting period will reset your temporary accounts and income statement accounts, transfer the balance to an equity account and carry forward the correct balances to the next accounting period.
When you close an accounting period in your Patriot Software account, we will create a journal entry to bring all your temporary accounts to a zero balance and close the remaining balance to your chosen equity account.