Period Closure is an accounting process that involves closing all transactions at the end of a specified period. This is one of the critical milestones for any business. As this process helps business to evaluate true status of financial health which forms the basis for several business decisions, resource allocations and legal reports.

It is vital to close periods within stipulated amount of time due to below reasons.

  1. Helps business to report their financial statements on timely manner.
  2. Enables business to meet legal and statutory requirements.
  3. Allows business to start financial activities for next open period.

While closing period you may face unexpected events such as corruptions, incomplete transactions, and performance issues on some process. These unexpected events can put the business in tremendous pressure since delay in period close would normally be a showstopper.

Here in this post, we will be discussing some guidelines which can assist business to close periods within timely manner and without any hiccups.

Identifying Incomplete Transactions and Corruptions:
Users can utilize EBS Period Close Analyzer (KM Note: 2468739.1) to collect and analyze required data to diagnose the issues and provides solutions and recommended actions. EBS Period close analyzer is a health check script that reviews the entire EBS applications and provides a report on potential issues related to period close.

Running this analyzer on regular basis will ensure that all financial activities are performed on both General Ledger and Subledger before closing Period in General Ledger.

This analyzer must be run before closing period, but it can also be run on regular basis (twice weekly) to validate if any corruption exists in General Ledger and/or Subledgers so that these corruptions can be resolved within stipulated timeline.

Along with EBS Period Close Analyzer below tools are also important to figure out if any balance corruption exists and/or any transactions stuck between Subledgers and General Ledger.

  1. EBS GL Analyzer Report (KM Note: 2117528.1)
  2. XLA GL Diagnostics (KM Note: 878891.1)

Ensuring Critical Tasks Completion:
Instead of starting critical tasks (required for period closure) at the end of month if business can start these tasks on regular timeframe, around 70-80% transactions will be completed much before period closure date.

These critical tasks vary depending on different subledgers, but few tasks are common across modules which are listed below.

  1. Create Accounting
  2. Period Closure Exception Report
  3. Reconciliation between Subledger and General Ledger

Please refer to Period Close Assistant (KM Note: 2500130.2) and Period Close Advisor (KM Note: 335.1) for more details on these critical tasks.

Avoid Performance Issues:
There are occasions when performance issues are reported in some key concurrent programs while Period Closure which delays the whole process significantly. If any fix /patch needs to be applied for the performance issue during period close dates, then a thorough testing is required in a Test Instance. Such testing could be very costly, in terms of the time and the resources.

Here are some suggestions which can be implemented to avoid performance related issues.

  1. Run ‘Program Optimizer’ from general ledger responsibility on regular interval (weekly).
  2. Run Gather Schema statistics every week for all the schemas.
  3. Set Debug Profile Options such as FND: Debug Log Enabled, GL: Debug Mode, PA: Debug Mode etc. as “No”.

Note: Following above recommendations would be beneficial not only for specific period closure but Year End Closure as March period is year end for some countries.