13th Accounting Period

If you chose to use 13 accounting periods when you setup your fiscal year, the program still divides your fiscal year into 12 calendar months. The 13th period allows you to enter adjustments without affecting a specific month in your company's financial data. For example, at year-end you discover you need to adjust your Accounts Receivable balance, or make a minor adjustment to your checking account. You may not know the exact month when the account went out of balance. The 13th period allows you to enter the adjustment and impact the year to date balance, only. The 13th period doesn't follow the 12 months chronologically; instead, you can use any date you want to enter transactions in the 13th period. To do so, however, you must enter transaction dates a little differently from what you are accustomed to.

To enter a transaction for the 13th period, enter an asterisk (*) before you enter the transaction’s date.

For Example: If you wanted to place a transaction in the 13th period and wanted to indicate that the transaction was an adjustment for a transaction you originally entered on December 12, 2005, you would enter 12/12/05. If you simply want to place a transaction in the 13th period and the actual date does not matter, you can enter whatever date you want following the asterisk. Regardless of the date you enter after the asterisk, that month’s accounting records will not be affected by the entry.

Note: Transactions for the 13th period can be entered in the General Journal Entry, Write Checks/Spend Money and Make a Deposit/Receive Money windows only.

Additional Note: During the Start a New Fiscal Year process, you may change the number of periods from 12 to 13. You may change from 13 to 12 only if you have not had transactions in the 13th period of the fiscal year just completed.