Period Ends

Period Ends are used to process all GL activity across an Entity Set for a given period on a year to date basis. This data is stored in a specific isolated table for efficient reporting, auditing and most importantly security - ensuring your external reports will never change from the data for those period ends.

Period End Features

Period End calculations can be run at any point against an Entity Set. Each Period is calculated on a YTD (Year To Date) basis and burns in all the GL data into an isolated table for the Reporting currency amounts.

The reporting currency is used as this is the one universal currency across all entities within the Entity Set Structure. Every Transaction is always recorded in 3 currencies; the local currency, the currency of the legal Entity, and the Reporting Currency. The Reporting Currency is the common currency we can consolidate everything across.

This data is all allocated, calculated, aggregated and summarized and placed in a specific Capital Account Data Items table for external reporting. This ensures no matter any changes made in the system (even by users authorised to open prior locked periods, make changes, and close the period again) the reports for that period will still stay exactly the same as they originally were.

Creating, processing, and finalizing a Period End does not close the period of each entity within the Entity Set. That is still a manual operation where you can close each entities period as required. Once all periods are closed, this would force the Financial Date of any GL Postings in those closed periods to move to the next new open period instead.

The process of closing period ends for each entity in an Entity Set is something the accounting team would normally move through manually reconciling at each entity. However you can execute a command from a Period End to close the periods of all entities within the Entity Set automatically should you wish.

As Of Date Processing

The LemonEdge platform has the ability to run any process "as of" any prior point in time. The Period End process takes advantage of this and incorporates that behaviour into its main process. When a date is entered the system will only calculate the Period End process from the specified As Of Date, this ensures any other transaction processing being processed in the system isn't included allowing separate teams to continue at the same time.

You can leave the Data Processing Date blank (the default) to ensure all transactions up to the Period End Transaction Date are processed, or you can exclude Transactions you don't want in this period end by using this date. They'll be included in the next period end instead.

Integration

Period End calculations can also be incorporated into other processes, such as custom processes you may run as part of you own Period End processing for your Entity Set.

For instance in Asset Management the Period End calculation is part of a Quarter End Process which includes manual Hypo transactions (and possible Cash/Distributions occurring at the same time) the team will create for that Quarter End. By making the Period End part of this process when it calculates everything it includes all activity happening as part of the custom Quarter End process too regardless of any "As Of Date" processing that may otherwise exclude that current activity.

Process

The Period End calculation process is designed to be completely configurable and transparent so you fully understand how the data is accessible for reporting and can control the process if you have custom processes/data to include too.

This is achieved through the CreateCapitalAccountData custom SQL Wrapper. This completely controls the process for creating the CapitalAccountData Period End data, and can be changed however you like. 

The process itself goes through the following high level steps:

  • Create all Opening Balance Entries by copying the last year end entries. 
    • Any Transferred entries (See Transfers) as Opening Balance Transfer In/Out
    • All other entries are marked as Opening Balance
  • Then all Finalized (and Cancelled) GL Entries for the current year up to the Period End Transaction Date are specifically allocated already are added.
    • These are marked as Period End entries if they are normal entries
    • If these entries arise from a Transfer them they are marked as Transfer In/Out
    • If these occur within a Transfer from the Transaction Date up to the Transfer Capital Up To Date then these entries are marked as Period End as if they actually occurred that way
  • The same process is repeated for all Transactions that aren't allocated and instead have to be dynamically determined from their associated Allocation Path.
  • The system then performs any required Rounding

See here for more information on the CreateCapitalAccountData process.

Reporting

This process simply creates Period End data to ensure you have a consistent, and highly performant mechanism for creating all consolidated GL Reporting. This includes Trial Balance, Balance Sheet, PnL, etc.

You still always have the ability to use our standard reporting tools on the actual GL Postings within this Period to recreate the results yourself. Likewise you can simply query and report from the generated Capital Account Data Items like any other table.

We also have GL Rollups as an additional simple reporting mechanism that allows you to easily create Hierarchical GL Reports from the generated Capital Account Data Items. See here for more information.

Views

Period Ends are managed through the following views:

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