What would you like to know more about?

Show Page Sections

Archiving Data and Summarizing Transactions at Year-End

Year-end is a good time to archive financial datasets and summarize transactions.

Archiving ACS Financial Suite Data

When you archive data, you make an exact copy of your financial dataset. This is helpful before you make major changes to your data. Examples of major changes include changing your general ledger period from a calendar year to a fiscal year and renumbering your chart of accounts.

You can retrieve information from archived datasets or make a backup of one. If you make any changes in an archived dataset, those changes affect only the archived dataset.

You can archive data at any time of the year and as frequently as you want during the year.

Archiving a Dataset

  1. Under Manage Records, click the Period End Procedures tab.
  2. In the drop-down list, select Archive Financial Data, then click Go .
  3. Click Yes.
  4. Enter a name for the archived dataset. For example: 2015 Church of Good Training History File. Click OK.
  5. After the files are copied, a message displays. Click OK.

Accessing an Archived Dataset

  1. Under Advanced Tools, click Select Dataset.
  2. Select Include Archived Datasets.
  3. Select the archived dataset that you want to make active.
  4. Click OK.

Summarizing Transactions in ACS Financial Suite

You can summarize a large dataset to speed up certain tasks in ACS.

Summarizing a year compresses the amount of data that is stored in ACS. If you have a large dataset, this can make certain tasks faster.

When you summarize, ACS creates a summary transaction for the last month of your fiscal or calendar year, and the applicable Accounts Payable invoices are deleted. You can summarize multiple times, but you cannot summarize data for the current year or your last year. However, you can summarize any year outside of those two years.

When summarizing the General Ledger, you must summarize the other modules as well. Only Accounts Receivable and Payroll can be summarized independently. Transactions, invoices, and checks must meet the following criteria before summarizing:
  • General Ledger — All transactions that were posted in or before the year that you select to summarize.
  • Accounts Payable — All paid invoices that were posted in or before the year that you select to summarize and were paid on or before the Paid on or Before date.
  • Accounts Receivable — All invoices that have an invoice date on or before the year that you select to summarize and were paid on or before the Paid on or Before date. This also includes all applied payments that have a payment date on or before the year that you select to summarize.
  • Payroll — All checks that have a date in or before the year that you select to summarize.

You must make a backup of your financial data before summarizing years, and we recommend printing a Trial Balance Report before summarizing. You can use this report for comparison purposes.

Summarizing Years

  1. Under Manage Records, select the Period End Procedures tab.
  2. In the drop-down list, select Summarize Financial Data and click Go .
  3. In the drop-down list, select the Fiscal Year that you want to summarize. Any non-summarized years before the selected year are summarized also. For example: If you select 2016, the summarize utility summarizes all years through and including 2016.
  4. In the GL Summary Source drop-down list, select a transaction source. To use this option, you must summarize General Ledger transactions.
  5. Choose which modules you want to summarize. Select from the following: Summarize General Ledger & Clear AP Invoices, Clear Accounts Receivable, Summarize Balances, and Clear Payroll & Affordable Health Care Information.
  6. Click Summarize Year.

Archiving Data and Summarizing Transactions Additional Field Information

After you summarize, you can delete vendors, customers, or employees. You can also delete accounts if the accounts had a zero balance at the time of summarizing and there were no transactions posted to the account during the current year or last year.

Additional Field Information

Fiscal Year - Select a year to summarize from the drop-down list. Any years prior to the selected year that are not summarized are summarized at this time.

You can summarize for any year outside of the current year or last year. For example, if you are operating in the year 2017, you can summarize year 2015 and any year before it. However, you cannot summarize years 2018 (current year) or 2017 (last year).

GL Summary Source - Select an adjustment transaction source. When accounts are summarized in General Ledger, ACS uses the selected transaction source in the summary transactions.

Summarize General Ledger & Clear AP Invoices - Click to summarize General Ledger accounts and clear Accounts Payable invoices. When you select this option, all modules are summarized.

Posted on or before - Displays the last month of your fiscal or calendar year.

Paid on or before - Displays the last date of your fiscal or calendar year.

Clear Accounts Receivable - Click to clear invoices and payments from customer records.

Summarize Balances - Click to clear all detail transactions and create a summary of transactions for unpaid invoices and unapplied payments for the Fiscal Year selected.

Clear Payroll & Affordable Health Care Information - Click to clear checks and previous year Affordable Health Care information from employee records.