'Partially Closed Accounts' journal with items from last year in the VAT accounts

If at the end of a period, you receive an error message that says "Period X, 20XX, cannot be closed since it contains a 'Partially Closed Accounts' journal with items from last year in the VAT accounts", this is because the partially closed accounts from last year have been transferred without all VAT periods being closed.

To solve this problem, you need to close all VAT periods from the previous accounting year, and then transfer partially closed accounts once again. If all VAT periods from last year have already been closed, you can try to transfer only partially closed accounts again (go directly to step 3 below).

The VAT Liability account (2202) is the account that VAT amounts are transferred into, when closing the last account period in a VAT period. This is something the program does automatically when running the VAT period end procedure. At year end there is not to be any balance on any other VAT accounts besides account 2202. The balance on account 2202 will be on the opening balance for the following year.

How to solve this problem

  1. Go to View - Accounting - Period End.
  2. Close the relevant open VAT periods and corresponding accounting periods.
  3. Then, go directly to View - Accounting - Partially Close Accounts.
  4. Select the accounting year that you wish to transfer the opening balance from and to in the drop-down list, and click OK.

There will now only exist closed accounts for the settlement account for VAT, not for the remaining VAT accounts. You can now attempt to close the relevant period again.  

Read more about:

Closing and reporting VAT periods

About VAT