Overview: Year-End Close

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 arrow graphic  FY13 Year-End Close Calendar - 19 Day Close

 

Year-End Close Defined

Year-End Close is performed to finalize a snap shot of transactional activity for an entire fiscal year. Stanford's financial fiscal year is September through August. Most processes run at Year-End Close are also run on a daily, weekly and/or monthly basis. For Year-End, these processes are performed for the last time for the entire fiscal year to ensure all transactions are posted and reflected on reports. The year is officially closed when these processes are complete (including posting).

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Specific Year-End Close Processes

There are a couple of processes that are integral to Year-End Close; Clearing of Organization Suspense Accounts, PTA Maintenance Blackout and the Shortfall Process.

Clearing of Organization Suspense Accounts

Organization Suspense Accounts (OSA) are holding accounts, set up for every department to account for payroll transaction errors. All balances remaining in the OSA must be cleared on a quarterly basis prior to the 'sweep' deadlines in order to avoid a $25 fee per payroll line.

At Year-End Close, Financial Management Systems (FMS) will perform an OSA sweep for transactions that posted to OSA's during Q1-Q4 of FY12 (SEPT-2011 through JUL-2012) that have not been cleared. A $25 per payroll line fee will be charged and posted to AUG-2012 for swept transactions. Subsequent sweeps will occur for remaining payroll periods, but fees will be waived. For more information, see Overview: Organization Suspense Accounts for Labor and Clearing Organization Suspense Accounts PowerPoint presentation.

PTA Maintenance Blackout

PTA Maintenance Blackout is implemented to prevent updates to PTA's during Year-End Close. The purpose of the PTA blackout is to avoid rejected journals during Close when deadlines are tight.

Shortfall Process

The shortfall process calculates the difference between the actual payout rate and the payout rate used at the beginning of the fiscal year to calculate endowment payout. This shortfall amount is posted to each endowment fund and liquidates available investments to cover any overdrafts at fiscal year-end.

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Schedules and Deadlines

At year-end, there are two preliminary closes before the final close. This allows end users to view August Month-End Close data and make additional corrections and adjustments before the final close. Once Final Year-End Close has occurred, no more corrections or adjustments may be applied to the prior year (year being closed).

The year being closed remains open for three additional weeks in the new fiscal year in order to process all prior fiscal year transactions.

  • All transactions will occur in the last month of the fiscal year, August.
  • Prior months will not be re-opened, so all adjustments will be reflected in August.
  • During this time, transactions for the new fiscal year may be entered into the Oracle system but will not be posted into the new fiscal year until the prior year is finally closed.
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FY12 Year-End Close Schedule

Fiscal Year 2012 Year-End Close officially begins Wednesday, August 29, 2012. There are five distinct timelines for activities included in the FY12 Year-End Close Schedule as follows:

  • Pre-Close: Activities before August 29
  • August-2012 Month-End Close: August 29 – September 6
  • Year-End Expenditure Close: September 7 – September 12
  • Year-End Fund Transfer Close: September 13 – September 21
  • Post-Close Activities: September 22-23

For detailed Year-End tasks and deadlines, review the FY13 Year-End Close Detailed Schedule.

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