Processing and closing a (fiscal) year

Click here to read more about creating a new year.

Click here to read more about making changes in a closed year (reopen year).

Click here to read more about settings in the type of leave when it comes to transporting balance to the new year.

Why should the year be processed and closed?

From the first of January onward, the previous year can be processed and closed, so that the remaining balance can be settled with the balance of the new year. A new fiscal year also means a new leave balance. To make sure new requests cannot be filed for the previous year, and to transfer the left-over balance to the new fiscal year, it is necessary to do end-of-year processing. This can only be done after the year has passed, so from the first of January onward.

What does the system do when processing the year?
The system checks the remaining balance, and thereby determines the transfer balance. This is determined by the following:

  • Settings at ‘Settings (gear icon top right)’ ⇒ ‘Master data’ ⇒ ‘Types of leave’.
    At ‘include max. number’ you can fill in how many days of this type of leave can be transferred to the next year. You can fill in any number of days here. If you fill in ‘-1’, this number will be unlimited. If you fill in ‘0’, left-over balance from this type of leave will not be transferred to the next year.
    Since the 2012 legislation on leave, normal leave usually has the marker -1, meaning that all the leave days can be transferred to the next year. This is the case because the system automatically regulates the expiration dates of all the different types of leave.

Before closing the year

Before you close the year, there are certain things you need to prepare for and be aware of.

  • The year can only be closed from the first day of the new year onward.
  • Closing the year is not definitive. The year can always be reopened.
  • If there are still requests that need to be assessed, the year cannot be closed. In that case, notify your managers of this fact, and ask them to take care of their requests. Of course, this does not include requests for the next year.
    To check whether there are any outstanding requests in the system, you can make a ‘request summary’ and export it to Excel. Filter the requests that have the status ‘outstanding’, ‘changed’ or ‘canceled’These statuses mean that they still have to be assessed by a manager. The filtered report is now an overview of all open requests. It is important that these requests still have to be assessed, otherwise, the year cannot properly be processed. Ask the managers in question to take care of these requests.
  • As soon as the year has been processed, there can no longer be any new requests in that year. In case it is still necessary to assess a request, you can do this by reopening the year.

Follow these steps in order to close the year:

  1. Notify your managers of the fact that you are going to close the year and that all requests need to be taken care of.
  2. Check via ‘LEAVEDAYS (top of the page)’ ⇒ ‘Overview’ ⇒ ‘Employee balances’ whether employees already have a balance for the new year. If not, recalculate the balance for the new year for all employees!
  3. Go to ‘Settings (gear icon top right)‘ ⇒ ‘Master data’ ⇒ ‘Fiscal years’.
  4. Choose the correct year in the drop-down list and select ‘Process’. The page will show a notification that an active task is being carried out. The system can only carry out one task at a time because no changes can be made while the processing is in progress. This prevents inconsistencies from appearing in the data.
  5. The system will show you whether the year is properly processed. It will tell you which employee(s) have been processed. When there are still employees present in the system who have outstanding requests, they will be ‘skipped’. You will get a notification for which employee(s) this is the case. In that case, notify the manager of the employee in question (who this is can be found in the edit employee screen) that s/he should assess the outstanding request(s). Afterwards, you can close the year once again.See the video below for a step-by-step instruction video about how to process the year. 

Click here to read more about creating a new year.

Click here to read more about making changes in a closed year (reopen year).

Click here to read more about settings in the type of leave when it comes to transporting balance to the new year.