Overview: Month End Close

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 arrow graphic  FY '09 Month End Close Deadlines

 

Month End Close Defined

Month end close is performed to finalize a snap shot of transactional activity for a period. Most processes run at month end are also run on a daily and/or weekly basis. For month end, these processes are performed for the last time for a particular month to ensure that all transactions are posted and reflected on reports. The month is officially closed when all of the month end processes are complete (including posting.)

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Month End Transactions and Processes

The month being closed remains open for six additional business days in the new month in order to process all prior month transactions. Additionally, many iJournals and core journals can only be generated after the last calendar day of the month.

Following is a summary of activities that occur during the 6-day close period:

  • Accounts Payable activity for the prior month is completed by the end of the first day of the new month.
  • End of month payroll data is received by Financial Information & Reporting Systems on the 3rd business day.
  • iJournals (including uploads) are imported daily.
  • Costing and burdening are performed daily in Grants Accounting (GA).
  • General Ledger (GL) journals are also imported and posted daily.
  • The GL Mass Allocation processes for Endowments and Student Loans are run at month end as they depend on the above items to be done first.
  • Also, in GA, the revenue process is run at month end primarily to save space in the GL tables (this is an ITSS preference, not a system requirement).

The majority of month end activity involves cleaning up transaction that are stuck from iJournals and processing incoming transactions.

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Typical Month End Close Cycle


Day 1
Month End Close Begins
Who What
  • Sponsored Projects, Fund Accounting, Capital Accounting
  • Beginning 7:00 am, Blackout period for closing PTA's (i.e. change from "Active" to "Closed").
  • Schools and Departments
Day 2
Who What
  • Accounts Payable Processors
  • 7:00 am, Oracle AP Module closed. No invoice payment transactions allowed.
Day 3
Who What
  • Sponsored Research, Capital Accounting, and Fund Accounting
  • Approved Owning Organization code change requests due to Financial Information & Reporting Systems from Central Offices

 

Day 4
Who What
  • Staff with iJournals Public responsibility
  • Staff with iJournals Specialist responsibility
  • Staff with iBudget responsibiliy
  • Labor Distribution Adjusters
  • Transaction Approvers
  • Financial Information & Reporting Systems
  • All prior month iJournals not approved by the 5:00 pm deadline are swept to the current month.
  • Central Offices
  • Capital Accounting journal entries submitted and posted.
Day 5
Who What
  • Core iJournals Users (Controller's Office and ORA)
  • 5:00 pm, cutoff for creating and approving Core Journals
  • Financial Information & Reporting Systems
  • Contributed Capital process generated, journal entry submitted and posted.
  • GL Mass Allocation process run for Endowments and Student Loans
  • Owning Organization Changes and PTA attributes processed
  • Account Receivable Processors
  • 11:59 pm, Oracle AR Module closed. No receivable transactions allowed.
  • Capital Accounting
  • 11:59 pm, Oracle FA Module closed.
Day 6
Who What
  • Financial Information & Reporting Systems
  • 11:59 pm, Oracle GA and GL modules closed.
Day 7
Who What
  • Sponsored Projects, Fund Accounting, and Capital Accounting
  • Oracle Financials Reporting Users (i.e. ReportMart3)
  • Daily Expenditure reports and Fund reports available online, reflecting month end close transactions
  • See Status of ReportMart3 Data
Day 12
Who What
  • Office of Sponsored Research
  • Begin distribution of Printed Expenditure Statements for the month just closed.
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