Archiving Company Fiscal Year Data

When Sage 100 Contractor Version 19 was released, there was great joy because the multi-year general ledger functionality drastically reduced the perceived pressure of having to archive the ending fiscal year before entering any data for the new fiscal year.  Version 19 changed all of that by permitting several fiscal years to co-exist in the same database.  The old fiscal year can be archived at your leisure, after all entries and adjustments have been made for that year.  Because it can be done at one’s leisure, I find that archiving is sometimes forgotten and we start to see three or more fiscal years residing in the same database. While the system works fine with several fiscal years still resident in the database, you can expect to see processing times start to slow down and people will get annoyed with job lists that include jobs done two years earlier.  The solution is to archive your oldest fiscal year soon after all of its data entry is complete and in agreement with your published financial statements and tax returns for that prior fiscal year.

Usually around this time of year, we see that financial statements and tax returns for the prior fiscal year have been completed.  Make sure that your outside accountant has provided any adjusting entries that they want posted to your books.  Post them to the correct prior fiscal year.  After the adjusting entries are recorded, run a Trial Balance (report 2-1-0-21) for Period 12 of the prior fiscal year and compare it to your published financial statements for that year (or send it to your outside accountants and ask them to confirm that this trial balance agrees with their work papers).  When your adjusted trial balance is deemed in agreement, that prior fiscal year can be archived.

Archiving must be done by the Supervisor user, with Exclusive Access.  Larger and busier companies find that archiving is best done very late in the day or on weekends when Exclusive Access doesn’t prevent other users from doing their own work in the system.  Decide whether you wish to, during the archiving process, remove:  (1) jobs with a status of Closed or Refused, (2) paid or void payable invoices not related to a job, (3) service receivables records with a status of Paid, Completed, or Void dated prior to a specific date of your choosing and (4) closed purchase orders dated prior to a specific date of your choosing that are not related to a job.  Purging can add significant time to the archiving process so you may elect to perform the purging of this data from the current company at a later, more convenient time.

Other preparation should include running a general ledger audit in menu 1-6, searching for and resolving Ledger Transactions (menu 1-3) with a transaction number of 0000, usually the result of not completing the printing of GL Checks (menu 1-1), and deciding what you want to name the archive company data folder.  It could be something like [Company Name] 123114 GL.  Just make sure that it’s descriptive and unique.  Have available a paper copy of your Trial Balance (report 2-1-0-21) for Period 12 of the year you will be archiving for reference purposes. Finally, create two backup copies of the current company data folders before starting the actual archiving process.

Now the easy part – as Supervisor with Exclusive Access, go to menu 1-6, select Archive Fiscal Year 20xx.  That selection button will display the oldest fiscal year available in your current company.  Follow all the instructions therein, reading and understanding each of the prompts.

If you have any questions or concerns or if you want help with the archiving process, give Mathieson Consulting, LLC a call!