Establishing a Transition Date

It is important to carefully consider when your system is to begin Live Operations, since this affects the balances that are entered. When the transition date has been established, you must identify the first month of Live Operations by entering the Fiscal Month and Fiscal Year in the General Ledger Parameters file.

When establishing a transition date and determining the way in which account history records can be entered, the following alternatives should be considered.

Alternative 1: Entering History in Initial Setup

You may choose to enter monthly ending balances as history for as many years as you want, either thru Enter Opening Balances (one month at a time) or thru Account Balances (one year at a time). Each month of history must be balanced or Process Initial Setup will fail with an error condition. If Process Initial Setup is successful, the ending balance for the month prior to the first month of Live Operations is rolled forward. For example, if the first month of Live Operations is fiscal month 7, fiscal year 2002, then month end balances for fiscal month 6 should be entered in each account. This provides the beginning balance for the current month. If the first month of Live Operations is the first month of the fiscal year, you must enter an End of Year (EOY) balance for the previous fiscal year. Do this by putting the balance in End of Year (EOY), not in Start of Year (SOY) or month 12 (or 13).

If you choose this option, you may make all journal entries for the current month, but only after ending Initial Setup.

Note that this option requires a greater amount of entry time than other operations.

Alternative 2: Entering No History

You may choose to enter no history. With this option, you enter master files and create balance records as needed and then run Process Initial Setup and End Initial Setup. This will put you into Live Operations. Once in Live Operations, you enter the current month's beginning balances as journal entries and then enter the current month's entries.

This option requires less data entry time, and will probably allow you to select an earlier transition date. However, you will have no historical balances prior to the current month to use for historical or comparative reports or statements.

Alternative 3: Entering History in Live Operations

If you want to keep year-to-date detail, and your transition date is not the first month of the fiscal year, then all current fiscal year entries should be made in Live Operations using the Journal Entries functions accessed from the Daily Pulldown Menu. These entries can be made in one of the following two ways:

1. Enter as prior period postings; or
2. Set the application parameters to reflect the first month's entry period, then enter the journal entries for each period, closing the month as each period is completed.

Note that if the first month for which data is being entered in transaction form is not the first month of the fiscal year, and if prior-period postings are not being made, the YTD General Ledger report in Live Operations will include only a summary posting for the difference between the Start of Year balance and the balance of the first month of Live Operations.