When I spoke to several Microsoft Dynamics GP consultants in my organizations there was no shortage of “Year-End Closing” horror stories.

What is interesting to me is that these horror stories could have been easily prevented with just a small amount of advance preparation. Specifically, Dynamics GP year-end closing training.

How can year-end closing go wrong?

As part of the Dynamics GP year-end closing process you need to check the posting type of all the accounts in the chart of accounts to make sure they are set up correctly; balance sheet or profit and loss. Every year, there is at least one client that doesn’t do this. Then they close the year and find out there was a balance sheet account that closed out to retained earnings and shouldn’t have because it was set up as a profit and loss account by accident.  Or the opposite, a profit and loss account that was set up incorrectly as a balance sheet account and rolled forward a beginning balance into the new year. Both these scenarios are fixable but are very easy to avoid with some training.

And other times there can be issues that are not as easy to fix later. What if you do a close without a backup that created two closing transactions. You will get weird corrections that basically mess up everything forever. We have seen that too.

How can you ensure a smooth year-end closing?

With those examples in mind we urge all CAL Business Solutions clients to attend our Year-End Closing Online Training Session on December 10, 2013:

Full Agenda:

9:00 am – 12:00 EST   Closing GL, AR, AP, SOP, POP and IV
1:00 pm – 2:00 EST     Closing Fixed Assets
2:15 pm – 3:15 EST      Closing Payroll

We will walk you through the year-end closing process and give you tips and tricks from our GP experts along with warnings on potential pitfalls to avoid. This training is great for clients who have never closed the books before and for those who would like a review of this important task that only comes around once a year.

We are also recommending that our clients order a copy of the helpful book, Accolade Closing GP Manual. This manual provides closing procedures for Dynamics GP modules GL, AR, AP, SOP, POP, IV, and PR. It also includes complete explanations of the processes being performed, the proper sequence in which to perform the closings, and when each module should be closed. And it is newly updated for Dynamics GP 2013.

In conclusion…..

Closing Dynamics GP properly for the year-end should only take a couple of hours. But if you mess things up, fixing it can stop you from working for days. It can wreak havoc with all your reports and basically cripple your accounting system until you fix the errors.

Isn’t it worth investing a couple of hours for group training or private consulting on something so critical? You have invested in an enterprise-level ERP system, don’t rush the most important entry of the year.

If you can’t make the December 10th training or prefer personal training contact CAL Business Solutions at 860-485-0910 x4 or sales@calszone.com