Sage 300 ERP Year in Review with Closing Procedures and Checklists

Based on valuable customer feedback, Sage Intelligence Reporting in Sage 300 ERP 2014 gives you more control over your financial reports. With the new Report Designer, you have two options for creating and designing financial reports depending on how comfortable you are with Excel. Novice Excel users will take to the Layout Generator which provides standard layouts that you can edit. More advanced users can leverage the Task Pane which provides maximum control and flexibility.

Like the core Sage 300 ERP modules, Sage Intelligence Reporting also features a new design, more comprehensive right-click functionality, and totally updated look and feel of Standard Reports for a cleaner layout and better “at a glance” report flow.

Get All The Details: Download the New Intelligence Reporting Features brochure (PDF)

New Cloud and Mobile Apps

During 2014, the Sage Data Cloud began attracting attention. This important new technology serves as a bridge that connects your on-premises Sage 300 ERP system to a whole new world of mobile applications, software, and services that are delivered from the cloud. Here are just a few of the newer cloud-based apps and Connected Services that integrate directly with your Sage 300 ERP system:

Sage Mobile Sales is a native iPad app that provides your sales team with everything they need to close a sale at the customer site – process quotes and orders, take payments, and collect signatures ... all while out in the field.

With Sage Mobile Service, field technicians can schedule work, optimize routes, access customer information, and even accept payments using their mobile device.

Sage Billing and Payment is a subscription-based app that allows you to easily process electronic customer payments - helping you to reduce paper costs, save time, shorten the accounts receivable cycle, and get paid faster.

Sage Inventory Advisor is an affordable cloud-based service that helps you reduce excess inventory and lower carrying costs while eliminating stock-outs.

One Spot, Everything You Need to Know

Sage 300 ERP 2014 offers so much more than we can pack into one article. But you can get everything you need to know about all the new features across every module by reading the release notes here.

CLOSING PROCEDURES CHECKLISTS

Year end processing in Sage 300 ERP (formerly “Accpac”) is designed to be fairly straight-forward. But understanding how to coordinate the process within each of the modules and in the proper sequence is important. It also requires a bit of judgment based on your specific system configuration and business processes. This article provides a checklist for general period end and year end closing processes.

Period End Processing

Before you can begin year end processing, you’ll need to run through your period end processes first. So here’s a checklist of typical period end procedures. Make sure you’ve finished the typical daily procedures in all ledgers, then proceed with these period end processes:

• Print Order Action and Aged Orders reports
• Print Sales History and Sales Statistics reports
• Clear transactions and printed posting journals that you no longer need

Purchase Orders

• Print Purchase Order Action, Aged Purchase Orders, and Shippable Backorders reports
• Print Purchase History and Purchase Statistics reports
• Print audit lists
• Clear transactions and printed posting journals that you no longer need

 Inventory Control

• Print stock control reports
• Print price and sales analysis reports
• Clear printed posting journals, serial numbers, item labels, and transactions that you do not need

Project & Job Costing 

• Run Update Payroll
• Create billings
• Recognize revenue
• Print audit and analytical reports
• Clear posted documents and posting errors

U.S. / Canadian Payroll

• Run Update Payroll in Project and Job Costing, if you use that program
• Transfer employee timecards to Payroll employee timecards
• Calculate payroll, and print and verify the pre-check register
• Process payroll checks, or direct deposits
• For Canadian Payroll, print and file government reports, such as records of employment
• Print transaction listings and other reports you require
• Delete inactive records that you no longer need
• For US Payroll, print reports required by federal and state law (941, W-2, and Quarterly Wage reports)

Year End Processing

Once you’ve completed all period end processing tasks, you’re ready to begin closing out the year as follows:

Order Entry

• Clear transaction history that you do not need
• Clear statistics and sales history that you don’t need

Purchase Orders

• Clear transaction history that you do not need
• Clear statistics and sales history that you don’t need

• Clear transactions for closed contracts and closed contracts that you do not need to keep

Inventory Control

• Do an inventory count
• Post a reconciliation worksheet to adjust for any variances found in the inventory count
• Clear statistics, expired contract prices, and transaction history that you do not need for drilldown

U.S./Canadian Payroll

• In addition, for calendar year end, print reports required by statute

Accounts Receivable

• Clear sales tax tracking information that you no longer need
• Clear history and statistics that you no longer need
• Run Year End to reset batch numbers, clear activity statistics, recurring charge amounts, invoices paid and Days To Pay counter
• Print the Customer List and customer statistics reports to verify the transfer of data to the previous fiscal year

• Clear purchase tax tracking information that you no longer need
• Clear history and statistics that you no longer need
• Run Year End to reset batch numbers, clear activity statistics, recurring payable amounts, invoices paid and Days To Pay counter
• Print the Customer List and customer statistics reports to verify the transfer of data to the previous     fiscal year

General Ledger

• Run Create New Year to transfer balances in the income and expense accounts to retained earnings and enter opening balances for the new year
• Print and clear the Batch Status report and the posting journal generated when you created the new year
• Using Period End Maintenance, delete prior-year fiscal sets, and reset batch numbers