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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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Jeanne - I am not aware of this being a setting. I just had a look at the settings and can't see it anywhere. I also just retried exactly what I did last week but this time didn't change the posting date. It did not let me post. So to me, regardless of whether the message appeared, it should not have let the document post.
This sounds to me like a "one-off unexplained" situation. It is one of those ones that you are probably almost sure the user has just misjudged timing or something but can't explain it. I tend to try and approach these ones with a benefit of the doubt mindset. I.e. - see if they can recreate it or get them to monitor and make sure it doesn't come up again.
I try and avoid spending too much time trouble shooting an issue like this one because of two reasons:
1. You may never find a solution
2. Cost-benefit for the client - unless it reoccurs, you may chew up time and money for no benefit.
I would wait and see on this.
Cheers
Heather
Correct - it is stopping posting to the General Ledger from that particular sub-ledger for the closed period.
Yes, that is correct. Posting date of the transaction is used to check whether the period is open or closed in fiscal period set up. Document date is from the invoice and posting date represents the date the invoice will hit the general ledger. This way you can enter the late invoices with correct invoice date even after period is closed date.Yes, that is correct. Posting date of the transaction is used to check whether the period is open or closed in fiscal period set up. Document date is from the invoice and posting date represents the date the invoice will hit the general ledger. This way you can enter the late invoices with correct invoice date even after period is closed date.
You can confirm this by testing entering a transaction in closed period from client machine. You should get message as soon as you enter the date for the invoice.
Heather - excellent explanation!
My problem is that the customer says that the message about the period being closed didn't come up and it allowed her to post to a closed period without warning. Is there any way to verify this? I hate to try to fix something that isn't broken, but if we were able to post without the warning message coming up, that would be a problem. Is there somewhere that this is configured?
Thanks!
>>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?
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.
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!
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.
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?
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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