Managing the calendar (tutorial)
The Fixed
Assets financial calendar is designed to be as low-maintenance as possible:
the calendar is created automatically, and all depreciation calculations
use this calendar without needing any further information from the user.
This tutorial shows how to modify the calendar for situations where you
need to change period and year dates from the defaults.
To load the tutorial database, start
Fixed Assets and click the Tutorial command on the Help menu.
Task 1:
Opening the calendar
Each
company database in Fixed Assets has its own calendar, which is used to
control periods and financial year information. The Calendar option on the Administration
menu is used to modify the calendar.
Open this window now.
The Calendar
window will open with a default
calendar based on a twelve-month year beginning on the 1st of April (for
New Zealand) or the 1st July (Australia)
Each year has twelve periods with
opening and closing dates. You can individually close each period or year.
It is important to check that the calendar is correctly set up for your
company before you start entering transactions, but the default calendar
should be correct for most small companies.
A new year is created, if necessary,
every time a current year is rolled over with the Year end rollover
command. This will usually mean
that after the calendar has first been set up you won't need to check
it again, and can just let it roll over automatically from year to year.
Task 2: Changing
the year convention
The standard year naming convention,
in line with Inland Revenue (NZ IRD) recommended practice, is to identify
a fiscal year as the month the year ends in (for example, fiscal 2007
ends in March 2007). To change this for the tutorial company, select the
2007 year in the calendar and click Edit year. Change the Opening date from
1/4/2006 to 1/4/2007 and click OK. The entire calendar will recalculate
itself accordingly.
To create a new year at the end
of the calendar click on Add year. The details will be set up automatically
to follow on from the last year in the calendar. Click OK to save the year.
Years can also be added before the first year if necessary.
Set the Accounting
year and Opening date fields
as appropriate.
To set the calendar back
to the standard convention select the first year again and click
Edit year. Set the Opening date back
by a year and click OK.
Task 3: Creating
irregular years
If a company's balance date
changes it may be necessary to create a longer-than-usual year. Fixed
Assets handles this by calculating depreciation in the affected year based
on the new number of periods.
Click on the year 2009 and
click the Edit
year button. Set the number
of months in the year to 18 and click OK. You'll notice that the 2009 year
has been adjusted for eighteen months and the following years have had
their start dates adjusted accordingly. Using the Edit year option
again, set 2009 back to 12 months and click OK. The calendar will be restored
to its previous settings.
While we
don't suggest you play with your calendar with live data, it is designed
to automatically apply calendar changes to the live ledger under any likely
real need. Changing the number of periods in the current year when there
are live transactions will work correctly. Do not make calendar changes
to previously closed years.
Task
4: Closing periods and years
The year worksheet allows
you to mark a period as closed by selecting the appropriate year and setting
the Closed
check box for that period. This
will enable you to prevent additions, disposals and changes in assets
being made to periods that have been closed, if using a strict monthly
reporting system.
A year can be marked as closed
by opening the Set calendar year window for the year and setting the Closed for data entry check box. This should be done for any years
you create prior to the current year.
What next?
This tutorial has shown how to
manage the calendar. The next section, Managing groupings, shows how to
create groups, branches and departments, and how to move minor groups
from one major group to another.
See also
Asset transactions tutorials
