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Month-end closing in WorkBook

What are the steps to financially close a month in WorkBook?

Resolution:

This guide describes overall steps of month-end closing in WorkBook. It does not contain a description of all the normal procedures that are common to any finance system (like reconciling Debtors and posting depreciations etc.), but focuses on the main areas specific for WorkBook.

1. Clear the entire Project Postings interface for both Approved and Non-approved records. 
   1. When all Creditor vouchers, Time entries, and Sales invoices are entered for the month in question they should all be posted in the Project postings interface. 
   2. Date in top right corner should be last date of month being closed. 
   3. This interface gives a very valuable insight to items currently in workflow, but dated in month being closed. These items should also be cleared entirely before the month can be closed as they can affect Gross Profit / WIP.
   4. Job closings must be posted as well and can – depending on settings – have a huge impact on Gross Profit numbers, since WIP is reversed in the process with actual Sales and external costs being posted to the P/L as well.
      Note: When posting job closure a job can never be re-opened for time entry again. Additional sales invoices/credit notes as well as external costs can be added to a closed at any time if opened up on the job by a finance user.  
      
2. Review jobs with expired end date. Close or prolong? 
   1. Cfr. above closing jobs can have a huge impact on Gross Profit and the list of jobs with an expired end date should hence be empty. Either close the jobs or prolong the end date – in collaboration with the Project manager on the job.  
3. Go through all job values. Go back and post all adjustments in Project postings. Make a final review with report 231. 
   1. If operating with a WIP accounting principle it is of course essential to review the job values when closing a month. 
   2. Either down write the hourly value if too many hours have been spent compared to progress – or do a write up to release further revenue.  
4. Review report 14 (open Purchase orders) on all Invoiced and Cancelled jobs in the job book. Post a provision for future external costs if relevant. 
   1. One of the most dangerous scenarios – regardless revenue recognition criteria used – is having all revenue recognized, but without having a provision for external costs arriving at a later date. 
   2. When using a WIP revenue recognition criteria the task is simply to go the job book and select ALL closed jobs in the status filter – i.e. jobs with status Invoiced and Cancelled. 
   3. Then run report Approved purchase orders (14) which will by default show the still non-settled purchase orders on the closed jobs. 
   4. Go through the individual purchase orders job by job – potentially some of them are just not settled by mistake. 
   5. The remaining purchase orders that are true expected costs must be provided for. The recommendation is to do this on a simulated creditor voucher with the purpose of having the rights jobs associated to the provided costs.  
5. Use report 264 for reviewing Gross Profit by Client/Job. 
   1. If setup appropriately report 264 will give you full transparency to the composition of the Gross Profit – including revealing if something is off track. 
   2. It is based on customized setup allowing for up to 12 columns to be displayed in the same report  
6. Close for activities in Accounting period settings. 
   1. WorkBook supports a gradual closing of allowed activities in a given month. For instance turning off time entry to begin with, then turning off sales invoicing and so forth. When month-end is completely done there should be no checkmarks left: