Welcome to part two of WAC Solution Partners’ series on closing periods! Today we will cover how to reopen and edit accounting period.
What is reopening a closed period and why would you want to do it?
In NetSuite, when a period status is “Closed” no transactions can be posted to any date within the period by anyone (including administrators). There are times when you find a transaction that was overlooked or there is a transaction that your accountant recommends entering in a previous period or fiscal year. If these periods are closed you must reopen them.
- Here is how to reopen an accounting period.
a. Go to Setup>Accounting>Manage Accounting Periods
b. The Manage Accounting Periods page allows you to close and open periods or to set up new fiscal calendars. Closed periods will be marked with a green check under “Period Close” and will indicate that AP, AR, and GL are all locked.
c. Click the checklist button of the period you would like to reopen.
d. Click the green arrow on the “Close” line
e. From here you can click the “Reopen Period” button. Note that the system will ask you for a justification for reopening the period. Fill in your reason.
f. The system will also require that you reopen all periods after the one you are opening, though they will remain locked. You will also have to go through the checklist again.
In the example below, July 2013 was opened for editing. As you can see, all subsequent periods were opened, but they remain locked.
g. Before editing a period, you will have to go back through the checklist…
h. …and unmark the items which were marked for locking.
i. Hit Submit.
j. Depending which checklist item you unlock first, items which were dependent upon it may become unlocked as well.
k. All periods after the unlocked period will also become unlocked. You may now make your changes.
l. To re-close the edited period, repeat the closing steps described in part one of this blog.
2. You may be wondering whether you have to go through the checklist all over again for each of the periods you opened. You do not.
Because re-closing any open, intervening periods which did not need editing was a tedious chore, NetSuite created Quick Close. Because this feature can close any period, it is not recommended that you use it to close periods where the checklist was never followed. The feature merely marks items as locked and complete—it does not actually perform the closing tasks.
a. To use this feature, go into your Manage Accounting Periods page.
b. Click “Close Multiple Periods”. There is no button marked “Quick Close” at the time of writing.
c. The system then asks you to select a period. Quick Close will close all periods dated before the one you select.
d. Click “Submit”.
The system will display this warning. Again, we do not recommend using this feature to close periods which were not closed properly by completing all items in the closing checklist.
e. If you are sure, click “OK”.
As you can see, NetSuite makes reopening and reclosing periods a fairly simple task and offers several tools with which to manage them.
We hope that this blog was useful to you. If you have any questions about closing or reopening periods, the Quick Close routine or any other NetSuite topic, please contact us by Clicking Here!
