How to advance the fiscal or calendar year

Follow the five-step process to start a new fiscal or calendar year in Sage 50 Accounting.

Fiscal year vs calendar year

A fiscal year is just any 12-month period used for accounting and budgeting purposes. It doesn't always occur between January 1 to December 31.

Advancing the fiscal year moves the net loss or profit to the Retained Earnings and resets the Current Earnings balance to 0.00.

A calendar year for payroll runs from January 1 to December 31.

Advancing the calendar year resets all payroll year to date totals to 0.00, and automatic tax calculations for the previous year won't be available.

 

Create a backup of the company

1. Log in as the sysadmin.
2. Browse to File, Backup.
3. Choose a safe location outside of the SAJ folder.
4. Select OK to save the backup.

Verify the current fiscal start and end date

1. Browse to Setup, Settings.
2. Select Company then Information.
3. Confirm the current Fiscal Start and Fiscal End date.
4. Select OK to close the Settings window. 

Check the company's data integrity

1. Browse to Maintenance, Check Data Integrity.
2. Verify it says Data OK at the bottom.
   • Review "Data inconsistencies have been detected" in the Integrity Summary window if the data isn't OK
   • Review How to exit history mode if the company is still in History mode

Advance the fiscal and/or calendar year

1. Browse to Maintenance, Start New Year....
   See the option to Start New Year is greyed out article if it's unavailable.
2. Choose whether to advance the fiscal or calendar year and proceed through the wizard. 

 NOTE: Sage 50 will automatically advance both the fiscal and calendar year if the fiscal year is January 1 - December 31. 

Check data integrity again

1. Close the Checklist window.
2. Close the Daily Business Manager window.
3. Browse to Maintenance, Check Data Integrity, and verify the data is OK again.

Post to previous year after closing fiscal year
Error: "An error has occurred ... moving the current year to last year"
Fiscal year or calendar year has advanced too far