Year End Closing

Overview

GoldFinch uses a soft-closing approach to simplify both month-end and year-end accounting. Unlike traditional accounting systems, GoldFinch does not require you to perform a Year-End Closing process to transfer Income Statement balances to Retained Earnings.

Instead, GoldFinch automatically calculates Current Year Earnings and Retained Earnings whenever financial statements are generated.

As a result, no Year-End Closing journal entry is required.

Closing the Income Statement

There is no Year-End Closing step for Income Statement accounts in GoldFinch.

When you run the Balance Sheet, GoldFinch automatically calculates:

• Current Year Earnings
• Retained Earnings

using the following accounts defined in Company Setup:

• Current Year Earnings Account
• Retained Earnings Account

This approach allows prior-year adjustments to be reflected immediately without requiring users to reopen and reclose fiscal years.

Month-End Closing

To prevent users from posting into closed accounting periods, use the Month-End Closing process.

The Month-End Closing process allows you to:

• Close completed accounting periods.
• Prevent unauthorized postings into closed months.
• Grant selected users permission to post to prior periods when necessary.

For more information, see Month-End Routines – GoldFinch Clientcare.

Current Year Earnings Account

The Current Year Earnings account is a system-calculated account.

Note

You cannot post journal entries directly to the Current Year Earnings account.

GoldFinch calculates this balance automatically whenever financial reports are generated.

Retained Earnings Account

Unlike the Current Year Earnings account, the Retained Earnings account accepts manual journal entries.

Typical uses include:

• Recording the opening Retained Earnings balance during implementation.
• Recording shareholder distributions or partner withdrawals.
• Recording other authorized adjustments to Retained Earnings.

Note

Routine year-end closing entries to transfer net income into Retained Earnings are not required, since GoldFinch performs this calculation automatically during financial reporting.