Prior Year Closing Overview

The prior fiscal year end close is usually processed in December of the current fiscal year. The year end programs close each company's prior fiscal year financial and budgetary account balances to the appropriate equity accounting distributions and move all transactions and account balances related to that fiscal year from the General Ledger's Open Years File (the GMP11) to the Closed Years File (the GMP21).

Six fiscal years of history are currently retained on the Open and Closed Years Files. When the year end close is processed, five years of previous fiscal year transactions are retained in the Closed Years File and only the current fiscal year resides in the Open Years File. This process prepares the system for the opening of the next fiscal year. Once the prior fiscal year is closed and moved to the Closed Years File, no adjusting entries can be processed against it, even as closed period adjustments.