The end of the year is a busy time for most restaurant groups. During this time of year, your year-end closing procedures are critical. Instead of scrambling, use our accounting tips to organize how you wrap up the year and set up 2024 to be even more successful.
It's important to start your year-end closing process outside of Sage Intacct. You will first want to review any of your external systems that would impact Sage Intacct. Make sure to validate that all of the transactions for the year have synced within Sage Intacct. Review all items within your expense software, your POS software, and any other external systems to ensure there aren't any missed transactions or errors within Sage Intacct.
You will want to ensure you have a record of any other sub-ledger transactions you've accumulated throughout the year. This includes things such as:
Ensuring you have kept track of all the transactions mentioned above is crucial in safeguarding a successful year-end closing for Sage Intacct. You will not want to proceed with processing year-end closing until all these sub-ledger transactions are accounted for.
After ensuring all of the sub-ledger transactions have been accounted for and are posted, you then check for any transactions that may be in an indeterminate state. Transactions could include:
Sage Intacct allows for sub-ledgers to be closed individually. This allows companies to secure the Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Management, and/or Time and Expense sub-ledgers while still being able to record any month-end journal entries. Remember that when closing a sub-ledger, any co-dependent modules will also be closed. For example, a Purchase Order closes when the AP module is closed, and an Order Entry closes when the AR module is closed.
Once you have closed the sub-ledgers, you will be able to reconcile them to the General Ledger. Here are steps to follow for reconciling your AP and AR modules to their respective GL accounts:
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE
Companies will want to post all month-end journal entries. However, instead of manually processing these each month, consider the following automation options available within Sage Intacct.
Some examples to consider the above would be the accruals, allocations, payroll, or depreciation entries. Please reach out to a member of our Tablespoon team to discuss how to set up any or all of these options in your instance of Sage Intacct.
Once all the month-end journal entries have been posted, you will want to reconcile your bank and credit card accounts. Within Sage Intacct, bank and credit card feeds are available as part of your subscription in an effort to move toward a continuous close. If you need assistance with this process, please get in touch with a member of our Tablespoon team.
After all the reports have been run, you are ready to complete your financials by closing the General Ledger module. Closing during the month of December 2023 will close the entity for all periods from January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023, but only if you have not been closing your books on a monthly basis. If you have been keeping up with the best practice of a monthly close, your "Close business books from" date should likely be December 1, 2023.
One last step to ensure you do is to plan out your reporting periods. With the start of a new year, several reporting periods for budgeting, reporting, and closing have yet to be established. Reporting periods were set up initially by your implementer during configuration. Only the last year, current year, and next year were created during configuration. With only a few clicks, your 2023 reporting periods will be ready to go!
Consider creating a year-end checklist with Sage Intacct's Checklist feature. Checklists allow companies to capture processes like:
Just be sure to review these checklists at a minimum annually to ensure all tasks and process changes are captured.
Don't be overwhelmed. Reach out to our team of restaurant accounting experts to help you make sense of your year-end accounting. Contact our team >