About closing the payroll

Important! Closing the payroll is not the same as closing the accounting books. All companies close payroll at the end of the calendar year, but not all companies close the fiscal year in the general ledger at the end of the calendar year.

At the end of the calendar year, close the payroll to prepare for the new calendar year. During the close, Sage 100 Contractor removes all payroll records and resets the quarter-to-date and year-to-date totals to $0. It is important to note that closing payroll does not affect the accrued vacation, sick, and compensation times in the employee records that you choose to retain. You can also delete old or unnecessary employee records.

Before entering timecards for the new calendar year, audit, back up, and then close/archive the payroll. Although you may back up your company data at any time, in the context of closing the payroll, it makes sense to back up your data after you have audited it and corrected any errors.

Closing payroll can be time consuming, and the time necessary to create an archive may be considerable depending on the number of payroll records and employees contained in each company. We recommend creating a schedule of tasks to perform leading up to the close. For example, consider auditing the payroll a month in advance of the scheduled closing date. This should provide enough time to resolve any errors that might exist.

While it is not recommended, Sage 100 Contractor lets you close payroll with uncomputed records, unposted records, even payroll audit errors. If you close with unfinished work, you must go back to the archive later and compute and post the records, repair the audit errors, and then adjust the payroll records in the active company. From the archive, you can also prepare and print the state and federal reports (including W-2 forms).

Note: When you close a payroll year, Sage 100 Contractor creates new ACA records for the new payroll year. It uses the December values from the previous year as defaults for each month of the new year.