Oldest Fiscal Year Starting Date
General Ledger uses this date for two separate purposes:
- To create fiscal calendars that begin with this month and date.
General Ledger creates calendars for the current year and all previous years to one year before the date you enter here. The year prior to the Oldest Fiscal Year is required for opening balances (which you post to period 12 or 13 of the year).
- To set the current fiscal year to the year for your opening balances. You are then ready to enter your prior-year data.
The best way to add prior-year data is to:
- Set the fiscal year to the first year, enter and post final-period balances, then create the next year (thereby closing the current-year income and expense accounts to retained earnings and moving the current fiscal year to the newly opened year).
- Enter and post period net changes for each of the prior years, creating a new year after entering each year's batches to close to retained earnings and advance the current fiscal year.
- Enter and post current-year transactions (or period net changes) up to the current period.
Sample starting dates
For example, if your fiscal year starts on April 1, and you want comparative figures from April 1, 2002, enter 04/01/2002.
If you don’t want to enter any prior-year data, enter the current year. You cannot change to an earlier date after activation.