Wildwood Canada BusinessVision Help

Yearend

First off, you need to understand the fact that there are three fiscal years available to you at al times. If you are not familiar with this, please read About Fiscal Years.

>>For immediate pointers if your BusinessVision yearend process has appeared to hang, go here.

Please keep in mind the following for the BusinessVision yearend process:

• It is extremely important to BACKUP your entire BusinessVision data folder BEFORE starting the yearend process.
   
• The yearend process MUST NOT BE INTERRUPTED. If it does hang or gets interrupted, you MUST restore your BusinessVision data files from a backup, because they WILL be in an inconsistent state.
   
• The Yearend process affects not just the General Ledger but also Inventory, Customers, Vendors, Customer-Specific Pricing, Multicurrency, Recurring Entries, and the BusinessVision Control File.
   
• BusinessVision does not make any closing entries for Income Statement accounts. Yet the balances for Income Statement accounts, as well as for retained earnings, are handled properly.
   
• In the General Ledger Chart of Accounts, essentially what the yearend process does is shift each fiscal year's balances over one "bucket". Next Year balances are shifted to This Year. This Year balances are shifted to Last Year. And Last Year balances get moved into GL History. Next Year balances are reset to zero.
  If you are not familiar with the three fiscal years in BusinessVision, please read About Fiscal Years.
   
• An additional step is taken for the Chart of Accounts. There is a hidden field which stores the beginning balance for Last Year. This balance is updated during the yearend process, but only for Balance Sheet accounts.
   
• During the yearend process, BusinessVision may appear to hang. This is because the progress bar sometimes ceases to update while the yearend process is underway. If you try to elicit a response from the BusinessVision program, Windows will display the infamous "Not Responding" message in the title bar of the BusinessVision application. This does NOT necessarily mean that BusinessVision has hung. BE PATIENT! Give it some time and wait. Most of the time the yearend process completes normally.
  If you do terminate BusinessVision during the yearend process you MUST restore the ENTIRE BusinessVision data folder from the backup you made immediately prior to performing the yearend process.

If you encounter problems with your BusinessVision yearend process, or it seems to take forever to complete, or even worse you have terminated the process before it has completed and now your GL Account balances are messed up, please contact Wildwood Canada for assistance.

Please also see Current Earnings GL Account and Fiscal Years.

What to do if the BusinessVision yearend process appears to be hung:

If the yearend process has appeared to hang, one way to check if it really has is to look at the time stamp on the BusinessVision data files. Here's how to do this:

From My Computer (Windows XP) or Computer (in Windows 7), navigate to the folder on your server where your BusinessVision data resides. In the following example I am using the BusinessVision demo data which is in C:\BusinessVision\Demo. These examples are also using Windows 7.

Click on the little arrow beside Change your view that givs you More options (as shown above), and select Details

This will give you the list of BusinessVision data files with more information displayed. Notice that one column heading is Date modified. Click on this column heading to sort the list of files in order by the date and time. Make sure there is a little down arrow above the Date modified label. This ensures the list is sorted with the most recently modified file at the top of the list (if not, click the column heading again). You may see a file called GL_NEW.BTR at the top of the list, or some other file.

Note the time of the most recently modified file... In the above example this is 9:31 AM.

• If it is the same time as your computer time or within the past minute or two, then this means the BusinessVision yearend process is still proceeding normally. It's still working with the data files.
• If the time is five minutes or longer ago, AND the BusinessVision program still appears to be hung (ie, it has not completed!), then the BusinessVision yearend process has indeed most likely hung. Give it a few more minutes to be absolutely sure. Right-click on a blank space and select Refresh to ensure the time is updated and current.

If the BusinessVision process has indeed hung, and you have verified that it has, then you must do the following:

• Terminate the BusinessVision program using Windows Task Manager
• RESTORE your BusinessVision data from the backup you made just prior to starting the yearend process (you DID backup before starting the yearend, didn't you?)

If you require any further assistance with this, please contact Wildwood Canada. Wildwood Canada has developed a utility that streamlines the recovery process from aborted or hung BusinessVision yearends.