Year End Closing With QuickBooks

hi this is Seth David from the world-famous nerd enterprises incorporated bringing to you another special screencast this time we're talking about closing out the year in QuickBooks knowledge is power make an impact by learning more call me right now at 866 nine four five eight zero seven zero four information about private trainings we always record the live session with you so that you can review it as often as you like afterwards hi Seth David here welcome to another special screencast the summary we are going to talk about your and closing specifically how it's handled in QuickBooks this comes from a YouTube question I don't know why I don't do this more often but I'm going to start doing it more often so if you've got a question send it out to at nerd enterprises on Twitter comment on one of my videos on YouTube or comment on one of my posts on my Facebook page and I might feature your Twitter handle or your YouTube channel or your Facebook account whatever that might be I will mention you by name and I will respond to your question via a video response so do that post your comments below on this very video whatever questions you have whether it relates to this or not post them here and I will do a video response within a week or two getting back to you so Kenneth wrote in on my youtube channel and asks can I cover how to close out and transition your QuickBooks into a new year thanks Kenneth you're very welcome sorry it took so long I can't posted this in the general comments on my youtube channel which I tend to overlook I forget to check that one but I won't anymore I'll keep checking it now to make sure so anyway let's take a look at what that looks like in QuickBooks now what I did was I went ahead off recording and prepared a simple company file just populate it with you know some income and expense and a few balance sheet items just it would look somewhat like an actual set of books and really what we want to focus on is the balance sheet now here's the thing when your QuickBooks does a lot of the work for you in terms of the closing entry and what I mean by that specifically is is the main thing that needs to happen at the end of any year at the end of accounting any you know accounting period or reporting period that you might choose when you're you know creating a report you have to take the net income for that period that you're reporting on and close it out to the balance sheet and you'll see that here if I change the balance sheet to last fiscal year that's what this is based on it's based on 2012 you'll see here's the net income on the profit and loss and see see how it shows up here on the balance sheet the exact same amount the reason is QuickBooks automatically posts a closing entry for you at the end of your fiscal year depending on what you've set up and what drives that is in your company menu and this is something you actually set up when you're initially creating the QuickBooks file but if you go into company and then company information you'll see where you've set your date ok let's try clicking here where it says edit and then this looks a little more familiar to me and over here fiscal year and this is the default is that it's going to be January meaning it goes from January to December tax year January to December so the fiscal year is what's going to drive when QuickBooks closes this out so if you have it set to January then what that means is on January 1st of each year it's going to take this 226 thousand net income and it's going to close it out to retained earnings notice there's no retained earnings account on this set of books yet because I just started the books on the very first transactions are in 2012 so watch what happens as soon as I push this forward just one day - January 2013 and hit refresh now we have retained earnings two hundred and twenty six thousand ten earnings is accumulated is the cumulative accumulation of your income last year withdrawals which brings me to the next part which is as follows notice I also had and if we you'll see that if I bring us back to last year again it's the same under shareholder capital I had a hundred thousand dollars in contributions and $10,000 in distributions for a net of ninety thousand dollars the other thing that I will usually do unless for some reason the client doesn't want me to and I've had one experience in all my years so far where a client didn't want they wanted to see the permanent accumulation in their respective capital accounts even though they were an escort but that was the only exception anybody else what I'll do is I'll is out these accounts to retained earnings the same the same account that the net income gets close to because what this then tells me is that we have two hundred and twenty six thousand in retained earnings from income from what we've earned plus a net of ninety thousand that we've contributed right so when I close this all out to retained earnings it all accumulates in that one account and you'll want to do it as of the first of the year so let's push this back forward one day and then refresh so I've got my two twenty six there I need to now add my ninety but I need to do it separately because these are sub accounts and I want to close each of them out individually so let's go to company and let's go to make general journal entries and generally speaking what you want to do is close out any amounts that are in the equity section the only one you'll always leave is you'll have a capital stock account usually valued it you know some arbitrary number that your attorney whoever said your corporation probably chose that's the only thing you leave and not close out to retain earnings but anything else in the equity section generally speaking you'll close out a lot of times you'll have an open balance equity account because of amounts that were transferred onto the books things of those nature always just close them out to retain earnings clean it up every year the on the first day of the year and January first by the way is a very good data pic to use for sort of special entries because it's New Year's Day so no business is open that day which means no it's not likely any activity should be recorded on that day other than special entries such as this one that we're doing just to close out the equity section and push all of it through to retained earnings so we need to close out shareholder contributions we need to close out shareholder distributions so let's just kind of lay out the framework here contributions distributions and as a shortcut what I did was once I selected contributions I just copied and pasted it and then it gets me right there on the list and I bring that down a little extra bonus tip now we need ninety thousand of one and ten thousand of the other and let's deal with the easier one first distributions negative ten thousand we need to increase that which means we need to credit that amount credits increase equity accounts the hundred thousand needs to be reduced right out of shareholder contribution so that's a debit and the difference of course or the $90,000 gets credited to retain earnings and a good double check is that we know the net contribution was 90,000 so we need to be increasing retained earnings the 90,000 is going on to the credit side to balance this entry out and then you might put a memo here saying closed out equity section from 12 31 2012 copy and paste that down to each line when I hit save and close watch what will happen so I'll zero it out and it will go into retained earnings save and close yes okay it warns you about posting to retained earnings and there it is now we have a clean equity section on January 1st with nothing about the 316,000 net profit and loss nothing changes so that my friends is how I handle really closing out the year in QuickBooks there's really not much more to do and if you double click this account off the balance sheet and then just set it for all dates you will see that here's the automatic entry that QuickBooks post closing entry I only posted the one entry the the net 90,000 to retained earnings QuickBooks does this one as I mentioned on 1231 12 it's automatic you don't have to do a thing the only thing you do have to do is again company company information if you're using 2013 you'll have to edit this in order to get into this section here where you tell it really what what's the first month in your fiscal year that's what counts here and that my friends is how you do the closing entry so please post your questions and comments below I look forward to getting them I look forward to responding to them and I look forward to doing follow-up video replies to those questions so get them out there right here on the YouTube channel at nerd enterprises on Twitter Facebook calm it is facebook.com slash nerd enterprises IMC nerd Enterprises Inc so post them right there on my Facebook page and I will do I will I will record a video reply to your questions I love doing it plus you're helping me create more content so we help each other this way it's it's a beautiful harmonious relationship and I look forward to engaging further into that relationship with you I hope you're having an absolutely fantastic day and I look forward to seeing you on the web

Channel: Nerd Enterprises, Inc.

Views: 168,198

Rating: 4.8685446 out of 5

Keywords: Retained Earnings, Fiscal Year, QuickBooks Company Information, Closing Entry, Balance Sheet, Equity Section, Net Income

Id: 5sSzxX3g_PA

Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2013