Financial Records System Manual

Chapter 20 - Month End Closing/Deadlines
GENERAL
Because the FRS is an interactive system, the time between closing out a month and opening a new one is measured in minutes rather than days. This makes scheduling much tighter than with a batch system. Deadlines become more critical. System monitoring is extremely important because reruns are inordinately difficult if not impossible. The decentralization of data input presents its own set of problems. Interactive batches must be tracked and accounted for. Reviews must be conducted to ensure that all batches are included before proceeding with the month end closing. This chapter will discuss what is required to ensure a successful month end closing.

SCHEDULING AND DEADLINES
The month-end closing except for June will be the last working day of the month. Interactive input will be accepted through 6:00pm that day. Automatic service billings entered into the FRS, via FTP, can be input up to 6:00pm on the last working day of the month. Input from supporting subsystems must be captured by the FRS one working day prior to the last working day of the month. Input data not received or captured in accordance with these deadlines will not be processed until the next month.

Scheduling production within the FRS is the responsibility of Business & Financial Services and Information Systems.

REVIEW AND MONITORING
Business & Financial Services is responsible for reviewing and monitoring system reports to ensure that all batches are captured by the FRS prior to proceeding with the month-end closing. The FBD009 and FBM100 reports may be utilized to determine which batches have been captured by the FRS on a daily and monthly basis respectively. The reviewer should also be on the look out for duplicate batches. This is especially important for batches generated by feeder systems such as payroll, accounts receivable and property. The review process should also check to determine if automatic billing programs such as Facilities Maintenance, Computer Center and Telecommunications are run as scheduled.

MONTH-END PROCESSING
Because of the number of FRS programs that must run and the number of reports generated, a month-end closing is scheduled to run over a two day period. While the system is processing data to close out the old month, users may begin interactive input for the new month. The system will not accept input to the old month once the closing has begun.

Report distribution is controlled by a e~Print. This software will package reports by organization, thus eliminating time consuming manual sorting.

Business & Financial Services should carefully review reports generated from first night to ensure that balances are as expected and to gain assurance that the closing should continue. The FBD043 report is extremely useful in conducting this review because it provides an excellent summary of each fund group. Careful attention should be directed toward cash (1100 Account Control) and fund balance (3XXX Account Controls). Transfers (48XX, 49XX, 58XX and 59XX Account Controls) and due-to's (19XX Account Controls) and due-from's 29XX Account Controls) should be reviewed to ensure that they are in balance. Also revenue (93XX Account Controls) and expenditure (95XX Account Controls) summaries can provide clues about duplicate batches. A quick review by the fund accountant will usually suffice. A daily review of the FBD009 and FBD043 reports will often avoid crisis situations at month-end. Other reports that are useful are fund group FBM094's and FBM095's. Mechanical entry diagnostics (FBD010) and the suspense listing (FBD016) should also be reviewed.