You can achieve a smooth end-of-year process with a little time spent on planning and preparation. The 12 steps below will help to process your accounts EOY.

⚠️Important: When you have worked through this article, you can then move on to NZ Accounts End-of-year 2025/26 Processing.

1. Book an Attaché consultant to perform your NZ end of year

If you would like to book an Attaché consultant to perform your end of year and/or the version upgrade, you can book this from our New Zealand EOY Consulting Services page.

2. The correct version for Accounts EOY processing.

To carry out your Accounts end-of-year processing and start the new financial year, ensure you are using the correct version of the software. To find your version in Attaché, choose Help, About Attaché.

Accounts EOY processing:
- Minimum version: Attaché 24.1.
- Recommended version: Attaché 24.1.

Accounts start of the new financial year:
- Minimum version: Attaché 24.1.
- Recommended version: Attaché 24.1.

If you're not currently using the correct version, you can:

Talk to your Access Attaché consultant about New Zealand EOY Consulting Services page.
Download the minimum/recommended version from the Attaché 24.1 link above and follow the Installation and upgrade guide to install the upgrade yourself.

3. EOY processing due dates

Make a list of all your due dates as this will give you the structure for your EOY plan. Items you might consider:

When do you need to roll Customers so that you can continue invoicing?
Will you delay rolling Suppliers for late arriving invoices?
When are reports expected by management?
If applicable, when do you need to supply figures to your external Tax Accountant?
Do you have any other reporting obligations to regulatory authorities?

4. Rolling your Attaché modules

You don’t need to roll all Attaché modules at the same time. End‑of‑period and end‑of‑year processing should be scheduled in a way that best suits your business.

The approach depends on whether your system is date-based or period-based.

Date-Based: date-based modules are more flexible and easier to correct. It is recommended that all date-based modules be rolled at end‑of‑year.
Period-Based: for period-based accounting, rolling periods or years is essential because transactions only belong to the period they are entered in. Cut‑off is strict, and documents for the next period or year must not be entered until the current one is rolled.

Date-based is more flexible and less work compared to period-based. Errors or missed transactions are also much easier to fix with date-based.
Typically, products and customers modules are rolled together.
If you are using period-based and want to switch to date-based, see: Move customers and suppliers from period-based to date-based accounting.

The most common plans for EOY processing are:

All modules at the same time.
Run all modules one after the other. This may not be practical if you are period-based and need to wait for documents from suppliers, etc.
Hold back Suppliers, Asset Management and General Ledger.
1. Run Products and Customers together so that you can keep sending out sales invoices.
2. Delay rolling Suppliers to allow for all invoices to come in (mostly a concern for period-based).
3. Asset Management and General Ledger are generally also held back and rolled with Suppliers

There are other options, for example if you are mostly date-based, you could roll all modules but hold back GL (and possibly Asset Management). This method allows for easier posting of late arriving transactions.
📌Notes:
- Whichever method you use, you should always take an archive immediately before running the end-of-year procedure for a module.
- This ensures you have an accurate picture of the module as it was at end-of-year.
- The archive you take should be specifically marked by changing the file name so that the name indicates it is an end-of-year archive and the file should be kept securely in a separate folder for several years.

5. EOY Stocktake

When you carry out your stocktake is up to you. It is best to perform a stocktake close to the end of the year to ensure your stock-on-hand figure for the EOY financial reports is as accurate as possible.
If you need to stocktake as part of your EOY procedures, follow the link to the Attaché stocktake process.
📌Notes:
- You can carry out one large stocktake or you can run several small stocktakes based on various ranges of products.
- Up to 99 stocktakes can be in progress at any one time.
- Your physical count should be carried out as soon as you have created the stocktake work data and printed your worksheets.
- No transactions for a product should be processed until the physical count for that product is complete.

6. Update your Bank Reconciliations

Ensure all bank reconciliations are up to date, including any lesser‑used accounts, as reconciliations are a key check that all transactions have been captured.

7. Check your Chart of Accounts

New General Ledger accounts: If you have entered new General Ledger Accounts during the year and have not run your standard financial reports for a while, you should perform a test run on your reports. Just because your Trial Balance reconciles, it does not mean your reports will.
Run the P&L Balance Sheet report:
1. (from General Ledger, Reports, Financial, Standard Financial Reports).
2. Check if the Net Assets equal the Total Equity.
Review your Chart of Accounts (from General Ledger, Reports, Details, Chart List), especially if new General Ledger accounts were added during the year. Check the following:

Add to/End of year indicator	Details
Add-to accounts	Each posting account adds to a total account, which is then used to accumulate totals on financial reports. An account must add down the chart to a greater account code. You can only add to a Type 4 – Total Account. Examples: Sales accounts add to Net Sales, Expense accounts add to Total Expenses.
End of year indicator	During the end-of-year processing you will want the balance of certain accounts to carry forward into the new year and others to clear. In addition, you may want the closing balance of one account to be the opening balance of another account. Check the following: Income & expense accounts: Income & Expenses are tracked for one year and at the end of the year the balances are reset to zero. The EOY Indicator should be 0 – Reset. The opening balance for the new year will be zero. Balance Sheet accounts: Balance Sheet accounts are running totals of Assets and Liabilities, therefore the balances are not cleared out at the end of year. The EOY Indicator should be 1 – Retain. The closing balance will be brought forward as the opening balance for the new financial year. Carrying forward retained earnings: The Net Profit at the end of the year is set to zero and the balance transferred to Retained Earnings for the new year. Retained earnings c/fwd: should be a Total account with EOY Indicator 2 – Closing Balance. This will be the total of the profit in the ending year, and may include adjustments for dividends, tax, etc. Retained earnings b/fwd: should be a Posting account with EOY Indicator 3 –Opening Balance. This is the account the profit will be posted to during end-of-year. During the year this account represents the earnings from prior years.
End-of-year account	For Closing and Opening Balance accounts, you must specify which General Ledger account the balance transfers to or from by completing the End of Year Account field in the GL Masterfile. For example, the Retained earnings balance‑forward account should point to the Retained earnings carry‑forward account, and the carry‑forward account should point back to the balance‑forward account.

8. Create your History Company

The History Company is a copy of your accounts data as it stands BEFORE running the Attaché end-of-year process, ideally, on ANY module.
This may not always be possible depending on your EOY plan.
Your history company will include ALL sub-ledgers and the general ledger. You will be able to refer back to this company in future years.
If you run EOY on your modules at different times, you will end up with multiple history companies.
You will need to select the appropriate final archive taken during your end-of-period procedures to be your history company.
The archive you select will be the final archive that has all transactions for the year and the one that was taken just before you started running the Attaché end-of-year process for any module.

9. Create a copy of your data using the Archive and Restore method

Create a new company for last year's data.
Select File, Set Up and Delete Companies and enter a new company name (for example, Accounts 2024 - 2025).
At the prompt: "Are you sure you want to add a new company named XXX?", choose Yes.
The Database Name and Data Path are created automatically.
Choose Accept (F9).
Sign on to the new company.
Select File, Open Company, open the new accounts company and then choose File, Restore Company from Archive.
Select the final archive you have chosen to be your history company.
Choose File, Restore.
You now have a copy of your 2024/25 accounts data. Check that the data has been restored correctly (enquire or run reports).

10. Prevent access to History Companies

Making a company unavailable to a user means it will not be displayed on the Companies list when they sign on or when they choose Open Company from the File menu. To determine which companies are available to a user:

Choose File, Set Up and Delete Companies.
Select the company and then choose User Access (F7).
Use Available/Unavailable (F7) and All Yes (F11) or All No (F12) to indicate which companies the user can access.

11. Disable edit functions in the History Companies

Disabling edit functions prevent users below the specified password level from opening maintenance tasks. A maintenance task is any task which allows a user to create, edit, maintain or delete data. Non-maintenance tasks are enquiry, lookup and reporting.

When disabling edit functions, you can add a comment to the standard information message which is displayed when users attempt to access the company. The standard message advises that editing in the company has been disabled and which user is responsible.

To disable edit functions in a company:

Sign on to Attaché and choose File, Set Up and Delete Companies.
Select the required company.
Set the Disable edit functions check box to Yes and type a password level from 1—9.
Any user below this password level will be prevented from opening maintenance tasks in that company.
To add a comment to the information message, select Notes (F4) and then Disable edit functions. Type your message.