Using a Preconfigured Chart of Accounts Creating a Chart of Accounts

186 Figure 15.3: Defining a financial year and periods First enter the date of the first day of your fiscal year and the last day. Then to create the periods click one of the two buttons at the bottom depending on whether you want to create twelve 1-month or four 3-month periods: • Create monthly periods , • Create 3-monthly periods .

15.3.2 Closing a Financial Year

To close the end the year, use the menu Accounting→ Periodical Processing → End of Period → Close a Fiscal Year . A wizard opens asking you for the essential information it needs to close the following year. When the year is closed you can no longer create or modify any financial transactions in that year. So you should always make a backup of the database before closing the fiscal year. Closing a year is not obligatory and you could easily do that sometime in the following year when your accounts are finally sent to the statutory authorities, and no further modifications are permitted. Figure 15.4: Closing a financial year It is also possible to close an accounting period. You could for example close a monthly period when a tax declaration has been made. When a period is closed you can not modify any of the entries in that period. To close an accounting period use the menu Accounting→ Periodical Processing → End of Period → Close a Period.

15.4 Payment Terms

You can define whatever payment terms you need in Open ERP. Payment terms determine the due dates for paying an invoice. To define new payment terms, use the menu Accounting → Configuration → Miscellaneous → Payment Terms and then click New. 187 The figure below represents the following payment term: 5000 within 5 days, 50 payment at the last day of current month, Remaining on 15th of next month. Figure 15.5: Configuring payment terms To configure new conditions start by giving a name to the Payment Term field. Text that you put in the field Description is used on invoices, so enter a clear description of the payment terms there. Then create individual lines for calculating the terms in the section Payment Term. You must give each line a name Line Name. These give an informative title and do not affect the actual calculation of terms. The Sequence field lets you define the order in which the rules are evaluated. The Valuation field enables you to calculate the amount to pay for each line: • Percent : the line corresponds to a percentage of the total amount, the factor being given in Value Amount. The number indicated in the Amount must take a value between 0 and 1. • Fixed Amount : this is a fixed value given by the Value Amount box. • Balance : indicates the balance remaining after accounting for the other lines. Think carefully about setting the last line of the calculation to Balance to avoid rounding errors. The highest sequence number is evaluated last. The two last fields, Number of Days and Day of the Month, enable the calculation of the delay in payment for each line, The delay Day of the Month can be set to -1,0or Any Positive Number . For example today is 20 December 2010, if you want to set payment terms like this. • 5000 within 5 days then set Valuation is Fixed Amount, Number of Days 5 and Day of the Month is 0 that creates journal entry for date 25th December 2010. • 50 payment at the last day of current month then set Valuation Percent, Number of Days 0 and Day of the Month is -1 that creates journal entry for date 31th December 2010. • Remaining on 15th of next month then set Valuation Balance, Number of Days 0 and Day of the Month is 15 that creates journal entry for date 15th January 2011. You can then add payment terms to a Partner through the tab Accounting on the partner form.

15.5 Opening Entries

To upgrade your various accounts, create a Journal of type OpeningClosing Situation in Centralized counterpart mode to avoid a counterpart on each line. For each account that needs upgrading, enter account data in the journal. For this operation use the menu Accounting → Journal Entries → Journal Items. You can also use Open ERP’s generic import tool if you load the balance of each of your accounts from other accounting software.