Preparing for period closing

Even if you do not run the closing program for Project Accounting, you should consider the order in which other processes occur toward the end of a period and how they impact subsequent processes. Each of these items is conditional, based on how you use Project Accounting and Billing and Revenue Management.

Follow these steps to prepare for period closing:

Use this table to identify timing considerations for activity-related processes that generally occur at the end of an accounting period:


Process	Considerations
Activity allocations	Before processing activity allocations, process and post all cost and revenue transactions that affect pools or drivers. See Allocations overview and setup
General Ledger allocations	Before processing General Ledger allocations, process and post all transactions (including billing, revenue, and activity allocations) that can affect General Ledger allocations. For more information about General Ledger allocations, see the General Ledger Allocations User Guide.
Capitalization	Before capitalization occurs, process all cost transactions, including General Ledger and activity allocations, that affect the activities you are going to capitalize. See Capitalizing activities
Billing	Before billing occurs, process and post all transactions, including allocations, that affect cost plus, pass thru, or time and materials billing. Burdens and fees that apply to billing are posted automatically when you update transactions using Activity Posting (AC190). For more information about billing, see the Billing and Revenue Management User Guide.
Revenue recognition	Before revenue recognition occurs, process and post all transactions, including allocations, that affect full accrual, percent complete, completed contract, or cost plus revenue recognition.
Encumbrances	Process encumbrances on the last day of the period. Encumbrances are based on current activity commitments, which are dynamically updated from Lawson applications. You should process encumbrances only once per period.

Note: You need to perform multiple iterations of each process to accomplish the results you need. For example, you need to process activity cost allocations before processing revenue recognition and also process additional revenue allocations after processing revenue recognition.

Note: Activity-related transactions can originate in Project Accounting, Billing and Revenue Management, other Lawson applications, or non-Lawson applications. Be sure you update Activity Posting (AC190) and Accounting Unit Balance Post (AC191) as part of posting transactions to Project Accounting and Billing and Revenue Management, regardless of where the transactions originated.