Year-end close

Year-end close finalises the financial year: it locks the period against further posting, carries balances into the new year, and rolls income and expenditure into accumulated funds.

What’s new

2 September 2026 — Reopening now accepts following-year student openings that are already zero. ShuleOne leaves those rows untouched, reverses only balances that were carried forward by the close, and continues to block changed non-zero openings.

Go to Finance → Year End Close.

The close screen shows the current financial year, checks and opening-balance state.

Caution

Closing a year is not casually reversible. Work through the checklist below and have your accountant confirm the position before you run it.

Before you close

Reconcile every bank account to the year-end statement. An unreconciled account at close carries its discrepancy into the new year, where it is much harder to find.

Clear unreconciled payments. Money received but unmatched should be allocated or written back.

Post accruals and prepayments. Costs incurred but not invoiced, and payments made for next year, belong in the correct year. These are manual journals.

Check outstanding fee balances. Confirm the debtors figure is real: bursaries recorded, leavers transferred out, receipts entered.

Deal with credits. Overpayments and pocket money balances carry forward as liabilities. Confirm they belong to students who are still at the school.

Close procurement. Receive goods that have arrived, and match supplier bills, so purchase commitments do not straddle the year.

Run and file the reports — cashbook, income and expenditure, balances, budget against actual. File them before closing, so what you filed is what the year closed on.

Running the close

1. Confirm the year being closed and the date.
2. Review the summary ShuleOne presents — the surplus or deficit being transferred, and the balances being carried forward.
3. Confirm.

After closing:

• The closed year is locked. Nothing further can be posted to it.
• Asset, liability and equity balances open the new year as opening balances.
• Income and expenditure accounts start at zero.
• The surplus or deficit is transferred to accumulated funds.

After the close

1. Open the new financial year if you have not already, and create its terms.
2. Set budgets for the new year.
3. Copy the fee structure forward and adjust it.
4. Check the opening balances against the closing statement of the year you just closed. They should agree exactly.

If something is wrong after closing

Most post-close problems should be corrected with an adjusting journal in the new year, which preserves the audit trail. If the year was closed accidentally and no later year has been closed, a finance administrator can reopen it from Finance → Year End Close:

1. Find the closed year in the history list and select Reopen.
2. Read the warning, then confirm the year.
3. Correct the old-year records and close the year again immediately.
4. Check that the new year’s opening balances agree with the corrected closing report.

Reopening is all-or-nothing. ShuleOne will not overwrite a changed non-zero opening balance or reopen a year when a later year is already closed. If it refuses the reopen, use the reason shown on screen to identify the affected balance; contact support before changing or deleting any opening-balance records.