Auto-Creating Fiscal Years & the Formal Closing Wizard

Two Optional Extras Beyond the Standard Setup

Automatic Fiscal Year Creation

If you use explicit Fiscal Year records (rather than just the simple month/day setting covered earlier in this course) — for example to model a genuinely irregular fiscal calendar — a scheduled action can automatically create each new fiscal year's record ahead of time based on your existing pattern, so nobody has to remember to set one up manually before the current one ends.

The Formal Closing Wizard

As explained earlier in this course, the Balance Sheet's Retained Earnings/Net Income split is computed live, with no closing journal entry required — this is the standard, recommended approach and needs nothing further from you.

A separate, optional Fiscal Year Closing wizard also exists (Accounting > Actions > Fiscal Year Closing) for businesses whose jurisdiction or auditor specifically requires formal, posted closing and opening journal entries at year-end, rather than relying on a dynamically-computed report. It generates configurable closing entries per a template, moves through Draft → Processed → Posted, and tags the resulting entries with a Closing Type for identification.

Important: Don't Use Both Approaches Carelessly

If you post formal closing entries with this wizard, their counterpart must go to the same "Undistributed Profits/Losses" equity account that the dynamic Balance Sheet calculation already excludes from its own prior-year rollup — otherwise the same year's earnings can get counted twice (once by the live calculation, once by the posted closing entry), throwing the Balance Sheet out of balance. Unless your accountant or jurisdiction specifically requires formal closing entries, the simplest and safest approach — used throughout this course — is to rely on the live calculation alone and skip this wizard entirely.