Re: Accounting Period - Change of Method

We had kind of the opposite story, yet it may benefit the list for the
telling...

Our implementation of 14 plants was initiated on a 5,5,4 fiscal calendar from
the beginning...  With the fiscal year beginning on October 1st...!  Our
Inventory period closes on the last Sunday of each month (usually)...  The
system works fine, just be sure to keep your month-end and week-end dates loaded
into your calendars and try to keep two years worth into the future...  The
system does funny things when it runs out of calendar dates...  Be sure to
define your 5,5,4 scheme to manufacturing under 1/MDU also...  Some months will
have 35 days and some will have 28 days...  If you go in there you'll see what I
mean, it's pretty intuitive...

About one year into the process we sold off one of our divisions (4 plants)...
The new owners engaged us to assist them in cleaving their database from ours
and setting them up in their own "WORLD" so they could continue to run JBA on
our box but segregated completely until such time as they could get their own
AS/400 up and running...  They are completely independent from us now...  (This
all was arranged with the blessing of JBA...  The separate "WORLD" concept is no
longer supported by GEAC, however...)

As part of that exercise their new parent company wanted to convert to a true
calendar accounting scheme instead of the fiscal calendar that we implemented...
They also wanted to change all of their history to reflect the proper periods
according to the actual last day of the calendar month, instead of the end of
the fiscal period...  Their accounting year started in January so that made
things even more interesting...

We had to engage the professional services of our local JBA office and they
eventually came up with a series of programs that would scour every record in
every financial file and convert the transaction history to an actual calendar
period scheme...  So October transactions which would have been in period 01 for
us would now appear in period 10 for them...

In this exercise it was imperative to change the transaction history records to
maintain continuity in the historical reporting...  It was a mammoth undertaking
but in the end it was doable and it worked out quite well...

You will need to ask yourself whether or not the historical transactions need to
be changed or if you can leave them as they are...  If you're not changing the
month that your accounting year starts in, you may not need to go to this
extreme, you will just have some fuzzy historical numbers for comparison
purposes when it comes to those transactions that used to happen near the end of
the calendar month...  My guess is that you will be able to live with that...

Regards,

Jeff Klipa
Mgr., System Applications & Development
Harvard Industries, Inc.
jaklipa@harvardind.com







John Taylor <John.Taylor@britax-pmg.com> on 07/25/2001 06:35:19 AM

Please respond to JBAUSERS-L@midrange.com
                                                              
                                                              
                                                              
  To:          JBAUSERS-L@midrange.com                        
                                                              
  cc:          (bcc: Jeff Klipa/Harvard)                      
                                                              
                                                              
                                                              
  Subject      Accounting Period - Change of Method           
  :                                                           
                                                              






Our parent company has decided to change the way we report to it by moving
from calendar period ends, to a system of periods containing 5 weeks and 2,
4 week periods per quarter.

Can anyone explain the implications of, or give further examples of pros and
cons with this change across the System 21 financial suite (352SP3). I'm
aware that sales invoices will be able to be raised for example in the first
period (was January) with a February invoice date. This I presume will have
some knock on effect with aging reports. Also sales analysis, if kept in
line with SL period end will not reflect the true sales per calendar month -
should this be kept in line with the new period close (as a cross check for
accounts) or left as is to report monthly sales?

Also what about PL, Cash and GL? (I admit not in my area of expertise but I
can pass on anything relevant)

Any feedback would be useful on this one.

Regards

John Taylor
IT Manager
Britax PMG Limited
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