One of the many advantages of using PropertyBoss is that you have a detailed history of your organization and all of your property management related transactions.  This information can assist with tracking down payments and expenses, closing out accounting periods and generally providing you with a useful overview of your business.  After you have invested the time to capturing all of this information, it is extremely important that you take the next step in “locking” that information to prevent inadvertent or incorrect changes to the data in the future.  This process within PropertyBoss is known as setting a “Close Changes Date.”

When you establish a Close Changes Date, you restrict the ability of users to make changes to financial transactions and certain lease information prior to that date.  These transactions will continue to appear in PropertyBoss but will either be view-only or will provide a warning message and require verification from an authorized user prior to change.

Following is a list of the key information you need to know to manage Close Changes Dates.

Closing A Period in PropertyBoss

All settings regarding Close Changes Date, including the date that PropertyBoss has been closed through, can be found in the Closing Dates preferences window.  Access to make changes on this screen requires the correct security credentials.

At the top of the window is the current Close Changes Date.  This the date that PropertyBoss has locked changes through.  For example, if you set the date to December 31, 2009, you will not be able to make changes on or before this date.  When you close out the month of January, you would update this date to January 31, 2010 and that would become the new Close Changes Date.

There are several ways you can set this date.  They include:

Option 1 – Manual – As the name implies, it is up to the user to set the date on a regular basis.  The last date entered in the Close Changes Date is the current date PropertyBoss is closed through.  Although this offers the greatest flexibility, this option requires a good internal process to ensure it is updated regularly.

Option 2 – Automatic “Rolling” Close Date – This option allows you to set a specified number of days behind the then current date of the system as the Close Changes Date.  For example, if you always want to close all transactions that are 45 days old or older on a “rolling” basis, you would set this to 45.  Then, no matter what the current date, changes to anything 45 days or older would require security credentials.  This option allows you to lock older transactions independent of when you may actually close your accounting periods.

Option 3 – Automatic “Specific Day of Month” Close Date – This option allows you to set a specific day of the month that you want to lock transactions.  In this option, the first date is the actual date of the month you would like the transactions locked through.  The second date is when you want to effect the actual locking of the transactions.  For example, if you would like to have your Close Changes Date always be on the 31st of the month but would like until the 5th of the next month before the Close Change Date is set, you would set the Set Closing Date to “31″ and the Of Previous Month On to “5.”  This option tends to reflect the actual monthly closing process that many organizations use.

For all three of these options there is a Use Provisional Closing Option.  This option will close the transactions to everyone except predetermined users.  For example, if you only want your accountant to make changes prior to a certain date, you could set them as a user under provisional Close.

If you don’t use the Provisional Closing Option, changes prior to the Close Changes Date will require an authorized user to (i) change the Close Changes Date to a date prior to the transaction they would like to change, (ii) make the change and (iii) then reset the Close Changes Date to the correct date.

If you have additional questions about setting a Close Changes Date or would like the added security of enabling an optional audit capability to keep a detailed record of changes within PropertyBoss, please give us a call.