10 Definition: The financial closure process ensures that all revenues, expenses, assets and liabilities have been properly reflected in the general ledger and sub-Ledgers. Once a period has been closed financial information is frozen to allow for meaningful reporting.
20 Timing: WHO closes all ledgers on a monthly basis, according to a closure schedule drafted at the start of the financial year.
30 Monthly closure activities: On a monthly basis Oracle modules are closed in the following order:
- Accounts payable (AP) module
- Purchasing module
- Accounts receivable (AR) module
- Inventory module
- Fixed assets (FA) module
- Oracle grants accounting (OGA) module
- General ledger (GL) module
40 At the end of each month the responsible major office and/or the GSC performs a reconciliation of their respective general ledger and sub-ledger accounts.
- Payables and receivables: On a regular basis, account owners reconcile accounts under their responsibility. Each balance in the general ledger should be supported by detailed schedules. The Head Accounts and Financial Reporting reviews account reconciliations on a periodic basis.
- Imprest: Each major office reviews that the cash book balances in the imprest system match to the general balances for that account. Any discrepancies should be reviewed and corrected by the imprest owner. Status of the reconciliation should be submitted to headquarters on a quarterly basis.
- Bank reconciliations: Bank reconciliations are done on a regular basis. Similar to imprest reconciliations each major office submits a status report of bank reconciliations to headquarters on a quarterly basis.
- Income and expenditure (including OLD) review and reconciliation: Each month's revenue is reconciled between OGA (award billing events) and the general ledger to ensure revenue is accurately recorded and reported. Similarly, expenditure is reviewed for accuracy and consistency. For OLD and throughout the month each major office should run the position monitoring report to identify any positions which are not properly mapped or funded and take action to resolve.
