Benefits and best practices

Know about the benefits of Financial Period End Process and best practices

Benefits

The following table lists and describes the benefits of Financial Period End Process:


Benefit	Description
Efficiency	Automates repetitive close tasks and data reconciliation.
Visibility	Centralizes period data, journal status, and exceptions.
Accuracy	Ensures all transactions are posted and balanced before close.
Control	Locks closed periods and maintains an audit trail.
Scalability	Supports global teams and multi-currency reporting.

The following are the best practices for Financial Period End Close:

Review all Actions Needed to ensure no pending billing or journal entries.
- This will ensure that all transactions related to the financial period are properly recorded and captured to avoid the risk of incomplete transactional data from being reflected in the financial period.
Run the Trial Balance before closing every period.
- This will ensure that final financial impact to the period is updated before the period is closed; therefore, “locked”. This process updates all Journal Entries impacts to the Trial Balance.
  Note:
  Even if do not run trial balance manually, Finance Period End Process will always automatically trigger trial balance run.
- This should also facilitate reconciliation exercise between Zuora Accounts Receivable Subledger to the General Ledger in the ERP. Users should develop operational process to leveraging Zuora Trial Balance amounts to reconcile overall Accounts Receivable balance recorded in the General Ledger within the ERP.
Export and archive reports (Trial Balance and Journal Entries).
- This will ensure the company has a “point in time” record of:
  - Trial balance as at end of financial period
  - Journal entry created and posted as at end of financial period.