Posting Receipts in Closed Period

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Preface this question with - I am a relatively new GP system admin.

My accounting folks brought me this problem, and I am trying to understand how it works, and what went wrong.

They closed the Purchasing & Inventory modules at COB on 7/30/10 (I can see that on the FIscal Periods Setup screen that they are closed).

On 8/3/10, a user posted a receipt to PO with the date of 7/30/10, and the system posted that to the Purchasing module.

What is supposed to stop them from being able to post to a closed period? I thought once the period was closed for the module it gave a warning that it couldn't do that?

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Frank Hamelly | MVP... 46,623 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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There are two dates to consider - the receipt date and the posting date. The receipt date and posting date both default to the current user date. However, the posting date can be changed in the Receivings Date Entry window (click the little blue arrow next to the date field in the Receivings Transaction Entry window) and check what the posting date is. I'm betting it's 8/3/10. :)

You are correct, you should not be able to post into a period that is checked closed.

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Community Member on at

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I thought so - well, guess it's time to open a support call! Thanks for your response - I do like to check before saying something isn't working right!!

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Victoria Yudin 22,769 on at

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I just tested this with GP 9.0, but I am pretty certain it's the same for other versions.

Closing the year in a subledger is not enough. You must close the period for the series under Tools > Setup > Company > Fiscal Periods. Otherwise subledger transactions can still be posted to closed years.

For the GL, it's a little different - you must proactively allow posting to a historical year in GL setup (Tools > Setup > Financial > General Ledger).

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JMcCoy 185 on at

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This thread has me a little confused. If you go to Tools > Setup > Company > Fiscal Periods and close a period for a series is that closing the GL or the subledger?

For example say I receive a vendor invoice in August for work done in March. The document date on the invoice is March. But all series for March is closed. So I change the document date to March and keep the Posting date as August. Will this post? The Posting date should be fine since August is still open. But what about the subledger? Will the subledger take a March date?

Now, what if the we received the invoice on the last day in July and just was not able to post it in July and now it’s August and July is closed. The Posting date on the Trx is still July. All series in July are closed. This won’t post correct?

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Victoria Yudin 22,769 on at

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What may be getting you confused is that you're thinking what you have is all one transaction. In reality these are 2 transactions. Using your example, you have:

1. Payables invoice with a Document Date in March, when it is posted in the subledger it creates:

2. GL transaction with a GL Trx Date in August.

Now let's look at the Fiscal Period Setup window:

1. The Payables transaction will look at the Purchasing series to determine if the period is open or not.

2. The GL transaction will look at the Financial series to determine if the period is open or not.

You could easily have the Payables transaction post and not the GL, if the period is open for Purchasing, but not for GL. You will never have the GL transaction post, but not the Payables one, because the posting of the Payables transaction is what creates the GL transaction.

Hope this helps to clarify.

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JMcCoy 185 on at

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Yes, thanks, that helped.
But getting back to the situation I described, what do companies normally do? If you receive say an invoice dated in a prior month that's closed, do companies just uncheck the Purchasing series?

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Victoria Yudin 22,769 on at

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It depends on the company. Some companies we work with do not want any document dates that are different from GL dates. Others keep the subledgers open for the entire year because they prefer to have accurate document dates, but they make sure to change the GL dates as needed. Still others have a cut off a few days after the month end and everything goes into the current month after that cut off.

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Community Member on at

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Our company is ok with the document dates being different from the GL - we close all the modules other than Financial and I believe that means that the user should not be able to post a receipt for a closed date. Is that correct?

Thanks!

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Heather Roggeveen 9,146 on at

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I think there is a huge amount of confusion on this post. A transaction has two dates associated with it. The document date and the posting date. The ONLY date that looks at the fiscal period set up is the posting date. You can have whatever document date you like.

In Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable, the document date drives the due date of the document. So, if you have just closed July for Accounts Payable, that means you can't have a posting date of July on the document. You CAN have a document date of July. What that means is that the GL distributions will update your August financial period, but the document will be picked up automatically in your August payment run.

The original problem was "can a user post a goods receipt to July if purchasing is closed and financial is open". I just recreated the situation and this is what I found.

Enter the goods receipt for July. It immediately comes up with the message that the period is closed and I cannot post, do I want to continue using this date. I said "Yes". I then adjusted the posting date to August, leaving the document date as July. I could complete the transaction and post.

Impact: GL is updated in August. Purchasing is updated in July. I did this with a non-inventory item, but I would suggest that if it was Inventory, then Inventory is also updated in July.

Reconciliation: Each module has historical trial balances. These can be run based on document date and on posting date. The reason is so you can reconcile effectively. Let's use Accounts Payable as the example. Run the HTB based on document date and you should be able to match with the supplier statement. Run the HTB based on posting date and you should be able to match with your GL.

In summary - all closing the periods does is stop people from using a posting date of the closed period from each sub-ledger. It does NOT stop Document Date in closed but Posting Date in open.

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JMcCoy 185 on at

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>>So, if you have just closed July for Accounts Payable, that means you can't have a posting date of July on the document.
So even tho the Posting Date is not really used in the subledger, it's used in the GL, it's used by the subledger to see if that series is open or not. And if not, the transaction will not post. Is this correct?

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