How do fiscal years work?

When you first create your company in Bokio, you will set your fiscal year in the sign up process. If you are a limited company, we will fetch this information from HMRC. Otherwise you will most likely have a fiscal year ending 31 March.

Create a new fiscal year

Once the company’s current fiscal year is over or if you want to create an earlier fiscal year, you can do this in Settings → Fiscal years.For example, if you have only 2018 in Bokio and want to create 2016, then you must first add the 2017 fiscal year. You can then create 2016 and so on.

Bokio will tell you when it’s time to create a new fiscal year.

There is also support for split and extended fiscal years.

Change the fiscal year

You can change your fiscal year in Settings → Fiscal year.

See journal entries for a fiscal year

If you click on "Accounting" and then “Journal”, you can see all the journal entries that have been created for the company. To see the journal entries that have been created for a specific fiscal year, select it from the drop-down list.

Remove a fiscal year

If you want to remove a fiscal year, go into Settings → Fiscal year and choose the year you want to remove. In the top right corner you have two options, “Close year” and “Delete”. Click “Delete” and your fiscal year will be removed. It’s only possible to remove the oldest fiscal year that have no journal entries connected to it. If you want to erase your bookkeeping, it’s all or nothing.

“Warning – your current fiscal year will end within the next month”

When the current fiscal year is approaching its end, you will see this “warning” if you go into “fiscal year” in the settings. There’s nothing to worry about. Once the fiscal year has ended, you will see a message asking you to create a new fiscal year, and then you’ll be able to enter your transactions as normal.

The way Bokio works means that there must always be a fiscal year that covers today’s date. The creation of a new fiscal year doesn’t automatically close earlier years. You can manage this yourself in settings and fiscal years.