Set Up – Trading Year And Periods

You must configure the system to recognise your Trading Year and in what Period of your Trading Year you will begin to use the system.

The Trading Year is normally divided into 12 reporting periods (i.e. months) and you will start using your Prelude Desktop product at the beginning of or during one of these periods.

To ensure the system correctly reports your financial performance, you must set the Trading Year and Periods at installation.

Thereafter, these will be maintained and updated automatically as you use the software in normal business activity.

Usually you will start your Prelude Desktop product with the Sales, Purchase and Nominal Ledgers in the same period. See Control Framework.

• First, set the current Nominal Ledger period and set which calendar month is to be associated with the system period 1. Click menu View > Parameters > Nominal & Cash Book and enter details in VAT and Nominal Page.
• Then set the current Sales Ledger period. Click menu View > Parameters > Sales and enter details in Sales Ledger Page.
• Then set the current Purchase Ledger period. Click menu View > Parameters > Purchase and enter details in Purchase Ledger Page

For example, if you have 12 months in your financial year, your business year-end is March (i.e. the first month of your business year is April) and you intend to start using your Prelude Desktop product from July (i.e. July is month or period 4), the settings would be as follows:

• Current Nominal Ledger period – 4.
• Month Name of period 1 – April.
• Current Sales Ledger period – 4.
• Current Purchase Ledger period – 4

If there is data in your current system to transfer into your Prelude Desktop product, you must set the current period to the month before – in this example, that would be June and period 3. This will be made clear later on in Opening Balances.