GL – Understanding the Ledger Status & how to roll the Periods/Months for each Ledger

1. This guide will show you how to understand the Ledger Status & how to roll the periods/months for each of the 4 different Ledgers (AP, AR, Inventory & GL). To do this, we need to go to Ledger Status (GL M076).

Or find it by going General Ledger – Period End Processing – Ledger Status

2. The following screen will appear which shows all 4 ledgers & what month they are in

The 4 ledgers are & the order in which they should be rolled are:

3. Inventory
4. Accounts Receivable
5. Accounts Payable
6. General Ledger

Basically, the general rule for when to roll each ledger period/month would be the below:

Note: The Inventory & Accounts Receivable periods need to be rolled a lot earlier than the other 2.

For Inventory, make sure to run the INV04 Inventory Valuation Report in Cognos ideally before the roll (see guide on generating & saving this report). The Inventory needs to be rolled before the start of the next month’s trading. So roll this on the night of the End of the Month (for example the night of 30/4/2021 or the 31/5/2021) or first thing in the morning before trading commences. Ideally the night of the end of the month!

For Accounts Receivable, this should be done after you have an up to date Bank Rec & you have completed it for the last day of the month as well as after you have run & sent out the Customer Statements. 

In an ideal world, reconcile the Bank Rec for the last day of the month on the 1st day of the next month & then run the customer statements in the morning/arvo of the 1st of the month (or 1st trading day of the month) & then roll the Accounts Receivable period the same day after they have been sent out. If you can’t do this until the 3rd or 4th for example then that’s ok but better to be up to date and prepared to do it on the 1st or 2nd day of the month.

For Accounts Payable, this would likely be done once you have got all the previous month’s/period’s AP invoices done, which may take until the 15th-20th of the month. You can leave this open longer if you like but I’d suggest trying to get all your AP invoices in & rolling after that is done. Anywhere between the 7th & 21st of the next month is probably ideal. HOWEVER, if this is a GST Quarter (for example the date is April 20th & we still haven’t done GST for the January to March quarter. DON’T roll the AP period until you have done your GST & done the GST Invoice in the system for 31/3/2021. 

Once the GST is done you should be fine to roll the AP period into the new month (APRIL in this example).

For General Ledger, this is definitely the last one to roll. Make sure the other 3 are rolled for that particular month/period before you roll the GL. This one can be left open for a fair while but I’d suggest rolling it near the end of the next month (roll March into April when you are near the end of April & AP has been rolled).

For EOFY, do not roll June until all your accounts have been finalised by your Accountant and your journals have been done. You may need to leave June open when you are in that December as your accounts may not be finalised yet.

Once you are able to roll, you can then roll the GL periods  to catch up to where you are in the year (aslong as the other 3 have been rolled for all the periods you intend to roll the GL).

3. Going back to the screenshot showing the Ledgers & their Status. I will explain what this means.

Looking at the first one for example there. The top one is Accounts Receivable. The Period End Date says “May 2020-2021”. This means the current period is in May 2021 (the 2020 – 2021 is showing what FY we are in).

If we rolled this period, it will then go into June 2021. So we would roll this one, once we have done the Bank Rec & the customer statements, ideally on the 1st or 2nd of the month (so June 1st we would roll & then the current period would say June 2020-2021 in this example).

The Inventory we would roll on the night of the 31/5/21.

You can see the Accounts Payable & the General Ledger are still in the April period. Once we are happy everything is in for AP in the April period we can roll it into May.

4. To roll the period/month for one of the ledgers, we need to go to Start.

5. Firstly, notice I am using a different dataset to do this roll, so the month’s dates are different, this one is the AP one in October 2020 – 2021. I will roll this period which will go into November 2020)

The following screen appears

6. It displays all ledgers but up the top it says “Start Supplier End of Period Roll”. That way you know for sure we are rolling the Accounts Payable period.

Before we press OK, the action down below is set to “Batch”. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO CHANGE THIS TO IMMEDIATE

So select Immediate & then press OK & the period will start to roll

7. The next screen will appear showing you that the system is starting to roll all your suppliers into the next month. Just let this load & roll, it will not take too long.

8. Once it finishes the roll the updated Ledger Status screen shows & it now shows that AP has rolled into the new month.

For this example, it has now rolled over into November, so October is closed.

Rolling the periods is quite an easy process. Just make sure you follow those steps & do not roll a period when it is not ready to roll!