Academies Finance

STARACADEMY – User Guide

Section 17 – Year End

Please check with Accounting Software Support that StarAcademy is on the correct version before starting the Year End procedure.

Changes from August 2014

As a result of changes requested by the Academy User Group the STARAcademy system has been upgraded and the Year End is now run in two separate stages:

  • Preliminary Year End - this is run as soon as possible at the end of August
  • Final Year End – this is only run after the auditors have signed off the accounts for the year and all final adjustments have been entered into the system. No further amendments can be made once the final year end has been run.

Period End processing is covered in detail in Section 13 of the User Guide and this processing is largely adhered to in these two stages of the Year End process but with some additional features that need to be taken account of.

In essence the procedures you need to follow in previous year end processes will remain the same – but there is now an additional level of flexibility that allows a different approach to the whole process.

At the end of August you will be able to (and should) complete your initial/preliminary year end with as much information that you have been able to enter as possible (i.e. treat it as much as possible as a normal year end process).

What happens with a Preliminary Year End is that the system will go through the Year End procedures as normal but instead of finally closing the Prior Year for any transactions it will keep it open until you are ready to do the Final Year End when it WILL be closed down as normal.

In the meantime in addition to the normal three months being available for processing (though immediately after the Preliminary Year End it will only be September (Current Month) and October (Future Month)) there will be an additional period open for posting and that will be “Prior Year” – elsewhere referred to as “Period 13”.

Any Prior Year transactions that weren’t entered when you ran the Preliminary Year End can now be entered into the Prior Year by giving a date that is prior to September 1st, including any journals that need posting (ie: Pension Liability and Stock available in the Financial reports screen). In addition you can enter Prior Year Creditors or Debtors using the button in the Year End Processes section of the Financial Reports screen accessed from the Reports tab.

The Final Year End process will then perform a “normal” year end,taking into account the entries posted in the Prior Year (Period 13)The Prior Year will then be closed and no further transactionscan be posted to it.

Examples of the messages that will be shown are included in Paragraph 14 below.

Housekeeping

Before the Year End Rolloverprocess (Paragraph14) can be run it is essential that the following tasks are completed:

  1. Pay as many invoices as possible relating to the current financial year
  2. Bank all income relating to the current financial year
  3. Review Purchase Orders
  4. Review Invoices Raised
  5. Enter Accruals (Generate Year End Creditors and Debtors)
  6. Print and Check reports
  7. Clear Old Cheques
  8. Inactivate or Delete Unused Supplier,Customer, Department or FacilityCodes
  9. Process Fund Transfers or Journal Corrections
  10. Post Depreciation and/or Disposals
  11. Bank Reconciliation
  12. Check Year End Financial Statement Reports
  13. BackupStarAcademy
  1. Pay as many invoices as possible relating to the current financial year
  1. Bank all income relating to the current financial year

Process 1) and 2) above as required.

3. Review Outstanding Purchase Orders

All outstanding orders that you have in your system should be checked to ensure they are still valid.This should be completed prior to Generating Year EndCreditors.

This report details all Order Commitments held within StarAcademy that are over 90 days old. Checks should be made to determine if:

a)The whole Orderis no longer required (in which case it should be deleted)

or

b)The Order has been paid via a transaction

or

c)A credit line has been entered that nets the Order to zero but the Commitment hasn’t been cleared, e.g.

If the Order total nets to zero the Commitmentfor each Orderline will continue to ‘roll forward’ into subsequent financial years when the Year End is processed. If an Orderappears in thislistwith an amount of zero theCommitment should be cleared.

If either of situations b) and c) above has arisen the Commitmentsheld for those Orders should be ‘removed’. This is completed via the Pay/ReceiveOrdersscreen (see Section 7for details).

Part order commitments which have not been ‘received’ or paid for using a transaction and which are no longer required should also be removed.

A review of Ordersless than 90 days old, which will not appear on this report, should also be undertaken. Any Ordersthat are no longer required should have the Commitmentdeleted or removed (as above) before proceeding. The Outstanding Orders Report may prove useful when undertaking this review.

4. Review Outstanding Invoices

All outstanding Invoices/Lettings that you have in your system should be checked to ensure they are still valid.This should be completed prior to Generating Year End Debtors.

From the ‘Debtors’ menu click the Aged Debtor button.

This report details all Invoice/Lettings Commitments held within StarAcademy according to how old the Invoice is (detailed view above).

Please Note: The age of the Commitment is determined by the InvoiceDate, therefore, if an Invoice is entered in Period 1 with a full year’s Commitments this will always show as older than 90 days once Period 4 has passed.

Checks should be made to determine if:

a)The Invoice is no longer required and no payment or part payment has been received (in which case it should be cancelled)

or

b)The income relating to the Invoice has been paid via an income transaction

or

c)A credit line has been entered that nets the Invoice to zero but the Commitment hasn’t been cleared

or

d)The Invoiceneeds to be written off as a Bad Debt.

If any of the above situations has arisen the Commitments held for those Invoices should be cleared. These can be cleared using the options to Clear Outstanding Balance or Write-off Bad Debts (see Section 16). Use of the Bad Debt Write-off option should only be used for genuine Bad Debts.

5. Enter Accruals

Accruals – an Overview

‘Accruals’ is the collective term for your Creditors and Debtors. Accruals must not be entered for Petty Cash Transactions.

An Accrual is an accounting transaction for any goods or services that will bereceived or supplied on or before 31st Augustbut where the invoice will nothave been paid, or where income due will nothave been received by the 31st August.

It is recommended that accruals are only entered into the accounts if failure to do so would have a ‘material’ effect on the final outturn figures for the Academy. A Creditor/Debtormay not be considered ‘material’ if it is for less than £100 and therefore should not be raised in your accounts.However ‘materiality’ limits may vary from Academy to Academy and the final choice should remain the choice of the individual Academy – please also bear in mind the collective total of outstanding commitments as this too should be taken into account.

Following the review (described in the preceding paragraphs) of all your outstanding orders and invoices, there are two ways in which Accruals can be added to StarAcademy. They can be generated automatically from the commitment records held on the system or manually within the Transaction screen.

The figure that will be entered as an Accrual will need to be the Nett figure, as VAT is accounted for separately outside of the Academy budget, and therefore, does not form part of the Accrual process.

Generating Year End Creditors

Please Note:This process can only be completed once your accounts are in Period 12.

You must enter Creditors for any goods/services that will be received prior to the 31st Augustbut which won’t be paid for by that date.

Creditors can be generated automatically within StarAcademy as follows:

This will generate a list of all outstandingOrder Commitmentscurrently held within StarAcademy. Highlight any transactions to be included in the Creditors list by clicking it.

Please Note: This process can only be performed once for each item and can only be reversed by entering a correcting Manual Creditortransaction via the ‘Transactions’ menu (see EnteringManual Creditors below).

Entering Manual Creditors

When StarAcademy is in Period 12 (August) users will be required to specify the type of transaction to be processed when using the ‘Transactions’ screen. This option will only appear in Period 12.

Select Expenditure and thenCreditor from the drop down list:

Enter the rest of the details as per the instructions for normal transactions (Section 8). The amounts must be entered net (excluding VAT). Remember to enter the Creditor’s amount as positive as it is expenditure.

This facility should only be used for transactions that are “material” and which won’t be paid until the next financial year.

You are able to make Creditor provisions for Credit Notes that you know are coming but haven’t received yet. This can be done (if material) by creating a Manual Creditor and entering the figure as a negative amount.

Generating Year End Debtors

Please Note:This process can only be completed once your accounts are in Period 12.

You must enter Debtors for any goods/services that will be soldprior to the 31st August but which won’t be paid for by that date.

Debtors can be generated automatically within StarAcademy as follows:

From the Debtors tab click Generate Year-end Debtors

This will generate a list of all outstanding lettings/invoice commitments held within StarAcademy. Highlight all the lines to be included in the Debtors list.

Please Note: This list does not include outstanding VAT claims.

Please Note: This process can only be performed once for each item and can only be reversed by entering a correcting Manual Debtortransaction via the ‘Transactions’ menu (see Entering Manual Debtors below).

Entering Manual Debtors

When StarAcademy is in Period 12 (August) users will be required to specify the type of transaction to be processed when using the ‘Transactions’ screen. This option will only appear in Period 12.

Select Income and thenDebtor from the drop down list:

Enter the rest of the details as per the instructions for normal transactions (Section 8). The amount must be entered Net (excluding VAT). Remember to enter the Debtor’samount as a minus as it is income.

This facility should only be used for transactions that are “material” and for which payment won’t be received until the next financial year.

Please Note: If you later receive an invoice for a Creditoror payment for a Debtorjust created as part of the Accruals processdo not record the payment or receipt until you are in Period 1 of the next financial year.

6. Print Reports and Check

Print the following reports after all the Accruals have been entered and compare them with the ones printed before to check the effects of the Accruals:

  • AR(All)
  • Capital (Fixed Asset)
  • Department
  • School Fund

These should be printed without Commitments shown as otherwise the figures will be distorted by the Creditors and Debtors just created.

By now any Commitments no longer required should have been removed from the accounts. Any outstanding Commitments that are left will not be shown on the final AR or BCR reports printed as part of the Year End rollover. These will automatically be ‘rolled forward’ to next year.

7. Clear Old Cheques

Any outstanding cheques held within the accounts that are over 6 months old should be written back to the accounts, either by reversing the transaction or entering a balancing entry into the accounts.

Use the Unreconciled Transactions report to help identify any cheques in need of attention.

Please refer to the FAQ “How do I deal with old cheques?” on the internet ( for future guidance.

8.Inactivate or Delete Unused Supplier, Customer, Department or Facility Codes

The Year End is a good time to review all Supplier, Customer, Department and Facility codes and to remove any that won’t be used in the new year.

Please Note: Only the Primary User can activate or inactivate codes.

Review Suppliers

From the Suppliers screen, click the ‘Manage Suppliers’ button. This will open a screen listing of all Suppliers that have not been used during the current financial year (either transactions or commitments).

To delete any of the Supplier shown highlight them within the list (by clicking them) and click ‘Delete Selected’.

Suppliers can also be deleted from the ‘Edit Supplier’ screen by double-clicking the required Supplier from the full Suppliers list,and then clicking‘Delete Record’.

Suppliers cannot be deleted if they have been used during the current financial year, or if an outstanding commitment exists for the Supplier. Details of all Suppliers will be held in the accounts until they are deleted.

Inactivating a Supplier

If a Supplier has been used during the current financial year it cannot be deleted. However, if you wish to ensure that no other transactions are coded to a Supplier once it is no longer valid it can be made inactive. Inactive Suppliers will still exist within the system for reporting purposes, however only active Supplierscan be selected when coding transactions, invoices or orders.

Inactive Suppliers will be removed as part of the Year End process if they are not linked to any outstanding commitments/debtors/creditors.

To make a Supplier inactive double-clicking the required supplier from the full Suppliers list,andplace a tick in the‘Inactive’ (by clicking it).

Review Customers

From the Debtors screen, select ‘Customer Details’ then click the ‘Manage Customers’ button.

Follow the same instructions as for Suppliers.

Review Departments

From the Department Codes screen, select ‘Inactivate/Delete Codes’:

Follow the same instructions as for Suppliers and Customers.

Review Facilities

From the Debtors screen select ‘Facility Details’:

Individual lines can be deleted or made inactive as required.

9. Process Fund Transfers or Journal Corrections

On reviewing the SOFA(available in the ‘Financial Statements’ reports screen) you may wish to transfer money between funds. Enter via Journal transfers selecting the ‘Fund’ option at the top of the screen.

Similarly should any transfers need to be made between Nominal Codes they can be completed now using the normal Journals option.

10. Post Depreciation and/or Disposals

As part of the FinaliseYear End process (see Paragraph 14B following) you will be asked whether you have already posted the final Depreciation values for the year.

If you answer ‘No’ you will be returned to the ‘Financial Statements’ screen and you should then choose the ‘Post Depreciation’ or ‘Post Disposals’ option as appropriate to post the relevant values.

The following paragraphs detail the process to be followed when posting Depreciation or Disposals either now or later as part of the Year End Rollover.

Whether you choose the Depreciation or Disposals option you will be asked whether you want to post using the NCC Asset Spreadsheet. If you select ‘Yes’ you should refer to the appropriate Finance Support Officerfor further instructions on completing this process.

If you select ‘No’ on the ‘Post Depreciation’ or ‘Post Disposals’ screen you will be redirected to the matching ‘Depreciation Journal’ or ‘Disposal Journal’ screen:

Posting Depreciation via Journal

Select the code prefixed ‘2’ that relates to the class of Depreciation you wish to post and enter a positive value for the amount you want to post.

Then select the matching code prefixed ‘D’ that relates to the class of Depreciation you wish to post and enter a negative value for the amount you want to post.

Add any further entries as required and process the journal as normal.

For example if you want to post £5,000 Depreciation for Motor Vehicles then make the following entries:

After posting your entry you may want to check the details on the Fixed Assets report: