Certain types of open accounting activity need to be addressed at year end for a number of reasons. One major reason is that such activity would be selected by the Annual Close process and closed out as a nominal account. In the case of a real account, the activity would be rolled forward into the new year. Another major reason is a desire to keep the budget (BFY) and accounting fiscal years (FY) the same for a particular type of accounting. If not rolled, an accounting line processed in a prior BFY/FY will pass that BFY along to all accounting lines referencing it in the new FY as well as all modifications, resulting in situations where the BFY is prior to the FY. In Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable there are controls set on the Application Parameter (APPCTRL) page to stop the inference of the BFY to certain referencing accounting lines.
Besides manually addressing open items, Advantage Financial provides three options to address open activity. There are many other policy and procedure reasons that exist for choosing or not choosing any of the above options.
Roll – A modification to an open accounting line increments the BFY, resulting in postings that back out the open balance in the prior BFY and FY while also booking the open amount into the current BFY and FY. Rolled receivables, however, will retain the original fiscal year, but will increment the budget year, as the receivable and associated accrued revenue must remain in the prior fiscal year for financial reporting and as input to Annual Close.
Lapse – A new document is created that performs a zero-dollar reference to the open accounting line, thus closing that line out in the prior BFY and FY.
Accrue – In the situation of an open encumbrance in which the goods or services have been received but not yet invoiced so that a payment request has been generated, a modification to the open accounting line occurs where the line amount is reduced to the closed amount. That open amount is then placed on a new accounting line, which was copied from the one modified down, with an accrual event type. This modification reduces the encumbrance in the prior BFY and FY while also creating an accrued expenditure in the prior BFY and FY.
Leave – Some sites even choose to leave activity open in the original BFY in which it was recorded. It is not a requirement that such activity be removed by one of the three options above.
There is no set time for lapsing or rolling, as all sites perform these actions as prescribed by laws or policies. Even the order of the two can switch depending on needs. Many selection options exist on the Parameters for Roll Process (RLPA), Parameters for Lapse Process (LPPA), and Fund (FUND) pages that allow for the selection of certain activity to lapse or roll. After one or more selections for either process, the other process can be run to select all remaining activity.
When the selection options on the two parameter pages are not sufficient, two other mechanisms that allow for a more targeted selection. The Roll/Lapse Summary Pre-Selection (RLPSS) and a Roll/Lapse Detail Pre-Selection table (RLPSD) pages exist to allow users to select individual documents or individual accounting lines. These pages are then the input source for document and accounting line identification, however, the open amount is not taken from either page but determined by the process as that could have changed while manual selection was taking place. Outside of lapsing and rolling, the tables provide an online mechanism for users to find those open documents and lines that contain their department as the document department.
There is a field for Department in the selection criteria part of each parameter page. Use of the selection criteria allows for year-end treatment of open activity to be different for a selected department or group of departments much like the year-end options on the Fund page. However, the field is limited in size so if it is determined that the group of departments needed is larger than the field size, there is the Open Activity Options by Department (OAOD) page and batch job by the same name. Together these two can combine to change the Action field and mark records as ‘Approved’ on the pre-selection pages for multiple combinations of department and document codes.
Particularly when rolling, but also when lapsing, a test should be performed in a test environment with a current copy of production. The reason for this is that many documents just sit without any activity against them. Changes in system setup can put these documents in a position where a successful modification or reference is not possible. Another area that can prevent a modification or lapse is the progression of time past any type of 'end’ date on the open documents.
For detailed information on the job (such as when to run, input, output, and process parameters) refer to the associated run sheet in the CGI Advantage Financial - General Accounting Run Sheets guide. The CGI Advantage Financial - Year End Manual contains more functional information on the process.