Competence date for transactions and the Fiscal journal report

This article provides information about the competence date and explains how to turn on the functionality for transactions in Italy.

In Italy, companies must use a posting date when they post transactions. The posting date in the fiscal journal is the date when the company acknowledges the transaction.

Usually, adjustment and closing transactions occur on the date when the balance sheet is approved by the Board of Directors. However, they can also be completed several months after the last day of the fiscal year. These transactions must be reported in the Italian fiscal journal on the posting date, which must be the same as the acknowledgment date. However, the transactions must have a reference to their competence date, which represents the date when the transaction affects the balance amount.

Turn on the competence date functionality

1. Go to General ledger > Ledger setup > General ledger parameters.

2. On the General ledger parameters page, on the Ledger tab, set the Transaction date reference to competence date option to Yes.

   After the competence date functionality is turned on, you can specify Transaction date as an acknowledgment date for each journal that can be used to post the adjustment and closing transactions for the fiscal year:

   • General journal (General ledger > Journal entries > General journals)
   • Fixed assets journal (Fixed assets > Journal entries > Fixed assets journal)
   • Bank account reconciliation (Cash and bank management > Bank accounts > Bank accounts > Reconcile > Account reconciliation)
   • Closing period adjustments (General ledger > Period close > Closing period adjustments)
   • Year-end close (General ledger > Period close > Year end close > Run fiscal close)
   • Project – Post costs (Project management and accounting > Periodic > Time and Material > Post Costs > Post)
   • Project – Accrue revenue (Project management and accounting > Periodic > Time and material > Accrue revenue)
   • Project – Estimate post (Project management and accounting > Periodic > Estimates > Post estimates)
   • Project – Estimate reverse (Project management and accounting > Periodic > Estimates > Reverse estimates)

Fiscal journal report

The Italian Fiscal journal report (General ledger > Inquiries and reports > Fiscal journal) is a monthly report that lists all the vouchers and journal entries in order, by posting date.

This report includes the following fields:

• Line number
• Posting date
• Competence date
• Document number (voucher number)
• Date for document
• Ledger account number and name
• Customer/Vendor account number and name
• Description
• Currency
• Debit or credit amount of the document

Example

The company's fiscal year is from January 1 through December 31. The balance sheet is approved on April 15. Therefore, adjustment and closing transactions are reported in the Italian fiscal journal in April, but they affect the balance on December 31.

1. Go to General ledger > Journal entries > General journals.

2. On the General journal page, in the Date field, specify December 31.

3. In the Transaction date field, specify April 15.

4. Post the transaction.

   

5. Go to General ledger > Inquiries and reports > Fiscal journal, and run the report. The transaction is reported on the fiscal journal line. The Posting date field is set to April15, and the Competence date field is set to December 31.

   

6. Go to General ledger > Inquiries and reports > Trial balance, and run the report.

   

7. Go to General ledger > Inquiries and reports > Voucher transactions.

8. On the Voucher transactions page, add the Transaction date column.

9. Verify that the Date field is set to December 31, and the Transaction date field is set to April 15.

Fiscal journal page numbering improvements

You can enable the feature (Italy) Fiscal journal page numbering improvements in the Feature management workspace.

This feature improves the calculation logic for page numbering in the Italian fiscal journal report. To update and store the page numbers, print the report to a screen with the Report PDF Viewer feature enabled, or print the report to a file in PDF format. Page numbers are calculated using the new algorithm when the fiscal journal report is printed in PDF format. Page numbers are stored so that pages for the next month’s report start sequentially using the next number after the stored one. This feature also enables an algorithm for grouping lines with the same column values into one line, so that only the necessary pages are included in the report printout.

If you need to calculate the number of the documents included in the Fiscal journal, complete the following steps.

1. Print the report in a PDF file format.

2. Convert the PDF to Microsoft Excel using a converter software.

3. Create a pivot table and in the Rows field, select Docum. No..

   

The number of documents is equal to number of lines in the pivot table.

Help us understand

We want to learn more about how people use Microsoft's custom Help toolkit. Take the survey (in English) and help us understand: https://forms.office.com/r/A4cUJgjkD1.