At the end of the calendar year, you archive the payroll to close it and 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. You can also delete old or unneeded employee records.
Important! Closing payroll does not affect the accrued vacation, sick, and compensation times in the employee records that you choose to retain.
Note: The payroll archive company is different from the general ledger archive company. If you enter transactions between closing the fiscal year and closing payroll, back up and archive your accounting and payroll records separately to ensure that you have permanent records of all your data.
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.