Year-End Close
Close your books with confidence using our smart, user-controlled year-end process.
What is Year-End Close? At the end of each fiscal year, income and expense account balances are transferred to Retained Earnings. This "closes" the year and resets your income/expense accounts to zero for the new year.
How It Works
BizBooks Pro features a smart year-end close system that combines automatic detection with user control:
- Automatic Detection: The system automatically identifies fiscal years with income/expense activity that haven't been closed
- User Approval: You decide when and which years to close - nothing happens without your consent
- Preview First: See the net income for each year before closing
- Selective Closing: Close all years at once, or pick specific years
Automatic Detection
When you log in, BizBooks Pro checks for unclosed fiscal years. If any are found, you'll see a prompt showing:
- Each year that needs closing
- The date range for that fiscal year
- The calculated Net Income (Income minus Expenses)
- Number of accounts that will be closed
Tip: The system looks back up to 10 years, so even if you're catching up on old books, everything will be detected.
The Approval Prompt
When unclosed years are detected, you'll see a prompt with these options:
Selecting Years to Close
- Each year has a checkbox (checked by default)
- Uncheck any year you don't want to close yet
- Click "Close Selected Years" to proceed
Remind Me Later
Not ready to close? No problem:
- Check "Remind me later"
- Choose when: 1 day, 5 days, or 15 days
- Click "Dismiss"
The prompt won't appear again until your selected time has passed.
Manual Year-End Close
You can also close years manually at any time:
- Go to Settings (gear icon)
- Jump to "Year-End Close"
- Select the fiscal year end date
- Click "Preview" to see what will be closed
- Review the income and expense accounts
- Click "Close Year" to create the closing entry
Reopening a Closed Year
Made a mistake? You can reopen a closed year:
- Go to Settings > Year-End Close
- Find the year in the "Closed Years" list
- Click "Reopen"
This deletes the closing journal entry and marks the year as open again.
Warning: Reopening a year affects your Balance Sheet. Only reopen if you need to make corrections, then close again when done.
Editing Transactions in Closed Years
BizBooks Pro protects the integrity of your closed books:
- If you try to save a transaction dated in a closed fiscal year, you'll see a warning
- You can choose to continue (which reopens that year) or cancel (to fix the date)
- This prevents accidental changes to closed periods
Tip: If you're entering multiple backdated transactions, you'll only see the warning once per year. After you approve, the year stays open until you close it again.
Common Scenario: Catching Up on Bookkeeping
If you're entering last year's transactions in January:
- The system will warn that the year is closed
- Click "Continue" to reopen and enter your transactions
- When done catching up, the year-end close prompt will appear again
- Review the updated net income and close the year