The Period End routine enables you to monitor performance over a fixed period of time relative to your business needs as set in System Control Options - Ledger Defaults. The number of periods you run must be the same for all ledgers.

The Purchase Ledger is dynamically linked to the Nominal Ledger, which will store information for a maximum of 13 periods before requiring the Year End routine to be run.

It is vital that you take a backup of your data before you carry out a period or year end.

Make sure that:

You will not be able to continue until the Transaction Audit Report has been printed. The requirement to print the audit report before running a period end can be disabled in System Options - Ledger Defaults by ticking the option Disable Audit Check at Period End.

The two main options are:

Period End - This increments the ledger Period number and the Nominal update Period number. The Current Period’s Turnover values are cleared on Account and Analysis Records. If you are currently in Period 13 you will only be able to do a Year End.

Year End - Sets the ledger Period number and the Nominal Update Period number to 1. The Current Year’s Turnover values are cleared on Account and Analysis Records. If the Nominal Update Period is already in 'next year', then you will not be able to do a Year End in the Purchase Ledger until you have done a Year End in the Nominal Ledger.

Advance Working Period - This is only displayed if Enable Working Periods is set to on in System Options. The Working Period can be more than 1 period in advance of the Open Period including Next Year; however, it cannot be further ahead than Next Year period 12 (or 13 in a 13 period system), and Nominal working period cannot be further ahead than Purchase Ledger working period. When you have advanced the Working Period, you are advised that users will be unable to post to open periods prior to the new Working Period.

If you run a Period/Year End where the Working Period is currently the same as the Open Period, then the Working Period is also rolled forward to match the Open Period.

Running a Period or Year End gives you the opportunity to remove Transactions. Only the transaction Headers are removed as the Detail lines update the Nominal Ledger. The detail lines can only be removed during the Nominal Ledger Year End.

There is a legal requirement to retain records for 6 years. This includes electronic data. We would recommend that, where possible, you also retain transactions for at least this period of time.

Transactions cannot be deleted, even when fully allocated, until they have been updated to the VAT report.

You can choose to delete:

All allocated transactions - All transactions that have been fully allocated will be removed from the system.

Only allocated transactions up to transaction date - If selected, an entry box is displayed for you to enter a date. All fully allocated transactions with a date before or equal to the date entered, will be removed from the system. Transactions after this date will not be deleted.

The deletion of allocated transactions is controlled by the period in which the allocation took place. It is possible to delete one half of an allocated transaction if the two halves are posted in different periods; this may result in there being a transaction in the system without a full allocation history.

DO NOT Remove Transactions - No transactions will be deleted.

The Goods Received not Invoiced button enables you to display a list of outstanding Purchase orders. See also Show O/s Orders, below.

The option 'Period End: Show O/s Orders' found in System Options on the Ledger Defaults tab automatically displays the outstanding orders window when you start the period end update. You should select this option if you wish to ensure that these orders are reviewed before running the period end update.

If the Year End update process fails due to a system crash or a roll-back failure, you will have the opportunity to continue the process from the point at which it failed.

However in this situation, restoring from backup and restarting the process is the safer option.