HiFinance 5


 

SECTION 7.1.6 - CALENDAR

 

USAGE: To setup and maintain the system calendar. All master-files in HiFinance (eg Debtors, etc.) use the calendar to allocate transactions to periods. The calendar must be setup before any transactions may be entered. Apart from this, the calendar is normally only changed as part of END-OF-YEAR.

 

DISCUSSION:

 

When you enter the calendar program, it will appear as follows:

 

 

The calendar allows for 27 periods. This is divided into 3 parts.

 

The first 12 periods relate to last-year. Transactions may not be entered into last-year, ie all of last-year is considered closed and is only used for comparison purposes.

 

The next 12 periods relate to this year. They normally correspond to months but you can change the end-dates. This might be done, for instance, to end each period on a Friday. This year’s periods can be individually closed. If you close a period, you cannot post to it. You can still allocate a Receipt to an Invoice even if the Invoice is in a closed period, however, you cannot create a new Receipt or Invoice in a period that is closed. You should close periods, once all transactions have been posted, before running end-of-period reports. This constitutes the only end-of-period function in HiFinance.

 

There are 3 periods that relate to next-year. These are provided to give you time to enter late transactions before having to run an end-of-year.

 

The screen allows you to enter names for the periods, the years and any cut-off-dates required. You may enter any names or dates as long as the dates follow each other. There are also several function key options:

 

<F9>       This function allows you to automatically setup the dates based on the computer’s date. This is the normal way of using the calendar unless you have special month requirements. HiFinance will assume that your financial year starts on the first day of July in the year currently set in the computer. It will then work backwards and forwards to fill in the other dates. You can still modify the individual dates manually, if required. This function also updates the year or month names. It assumes the year from the period-end dates. If your calendar year does not start on 1st of July (eg USA or Japanese companies) do not use <F9>. In this case you should enter the fields manually.

 

<F10>      Press this key when you wish to save the changes you have made. You will be required to confirm your selection.

 

At the bottom of the date area HiFinance displays the time/date/usercode of the last change made to the calendar. This is sometimes useful when trying to trace a problem caused by inappropriate changes to this data. This information is entered automatically when an update is made to the calendar and cannot be changed manually.

 

You can enter the calendar program either from the MAIN MENU or from the END-OF-YEAR routine. If you have entered from the END-OF-YEAR program, you will be returned to that program. If you have entered from the MAIN MENU, you will be asked UPDATE TRANSACTIONS TO MATCH CHANGE? This option allows you to update the transactions to match any changes you might have made. If you have just changed the month or year names, you will probably answer N. However, if you have changed cut-off-dates from active periods, the period numbers in the transactions need to be reset, otherwise some reports will incorrectly total periods. In this case, reply Y. Note that this might take some time to update as every transaction in every sub-section must be accessed and updated. It is also very important to makes sure that no-one is processing transactions while the transaction files are being update. HiFinance creates a new file from the old transaction file and renames the new file to the old one when finished. If someone attempts to post, say an Invoice, during that time, the posting could be lost, or the whole file might be deleted by the process. Enquiries and reports are generally safe, but not recommended. In sort, you should treat this process the same way you treat END-OF-YEAR processing (for the same reasons). Although closing a period can done at any time, rebuilding of the transaction files should be an out-of-hours process.

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