End of Month

The debtors files have three states or modes. These are:

• Normal - the condition the system is in for most of the month

• Preparation - a state where the accounts manager wishes to control what information belongs to this period and what information should be held over until next period

• Lock -a state where the accounts manager wishes to prevent any changes from taking place in the debtors files so that reports will remain consistent and the accounting period can be closed off and a new one started

During most of the month documents can be processed without concern because the period in which the input of the document occurs is also the period in which the debtors system is currently processing information. When the end of the month approaches a problem arises. The sales system wishes to continue making sales but the debtors system wishes to stop and produce monthly reports and statements. Acumen has a rather unique solution to this problem.

When the end of the last day of trading for a period has arrived the accounts manager uses the Configuration screen to set the Debtors status to Preparation mode. If this is not done the accounts manager will receive a reminder, when logging on the next day, asking if preparation mode should now be set.

The purpose of Preparation mode is this. Documents raised before the system was switched into preparation mode but as yet not updated will still be processed against debtors for that period. While document raised after this point will not be processed against the debtors until the debtors are aged and the new period is begun. All documents are updated against current stock on hand regardless of the debtors mode. Management level users may choose to force held documents to be processed in the current period at their discretion.

For distributed system users, documents arriving from remote sites can be processed in the current period at the discretion of the manager by uploading those batches immediately and processing them. Batches not to be processed this period should still be loaded to the master batch but not processed, this is handled automatically if the branch of origin has its own stock file and thus the documents within the batch know to which period they belong.

Once all documents that require processing in the current period have been processed then the debtors system can be set to Lock mode using the Configuration screen. Once Lock mode is set no documents can be processed against the debtors. All documents raised will be held for processing against the debtors at a later date. This allows debtors reports to be produced without fear of inconsistencies caused by ever changing data.

For users with systems that allow delayed processing Preparation mode and Lock mode allow the accounts department to take as long as is necessary in completing the end of the month process without hindering sales. As sales documents are still processed against the stock on hand figure, the purchasing and stock control systems are unaffected by the end of month process.