(UK) Year End date change to bases period reforms
With the new basis period changes coming into effect, some clients may want to change their year-end from 30.09 to 31.03. Currently changing the year-end in Xero will cause previous opening balances to change and most likely mean any working papers produced in Xero will no longer match the accounts.
It would be a useful tool to have something whereby a previous accounting period end could be locked so a new year-end could be chosen without messing up the old year-end balances.
Hi everyone, as mentioned earlier our team have been making change across Xero to align with the UK basis period reforms. We recently made a change to Financial settings so you can add start and end dates to different periods. This change impacts multiple areas of Xero. As a reminder from our last post -
Fixed assets will draw on this information, to prevent any loss of historic information when your year end changes. Everything will automatically be calculated for you based on the period start and end dates you set in Financial Settings.
The same story will apply in Reporting. All historic reports will be protected. And you’ll have accurate comparison periods even across varied financial years.
In Xero Tax, you’ll be able to enter transitional profit, and track this across five years.
In the meantime, once your practice is comfortable with the implications of basis period reform, it’s good to start checking which clients will be affected. In Xero HQ, you can filter your client list by year end date to easily check this.
As recently noted - currently it's only possible to do a longer transitional period (12+ months) however we're currently working on shorter periods (<12 months) which we'll be providing in the near future. I'll update you all here once this become available.
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Lindsay Holmes commented
I also require an update on this. I have a client with a 30.04 YE so their accounting period needs to be 11 months! They are now querying how to change this on Xero and there is no resolve....its the 5th April tomorrow!! Please advise
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Claire Stephens commented
The ability to manage the financial year-end is a great addition, however, why is it that the transition period can only be more than 12 months? I have clients who have reduced their accounting period when changing year-end, as otherwise they would have a period longer than 18 months, which isn't allowed for limited companies. Currently, if I change the year-end without a transition period, I lose the previous year's data and the fixed assets entries undo themselves! If I add a transition period, it rolls two accounting periods into one of 19 months, so they won't agree with my statutory accounts. This is really not acceptable. We need this sorted asap - it's not just the basis period reforms which make this a priority as it applies to limited companies too.
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Matthew Phillips commented
Hi,
I note on some clients there is now an option to manage the year end which is great. Today I was going to test this on a farm client where we have prepared their accounts to 30.09.2023 as usual as they had recorded their livestock etc at this date. We then hope to change the year end to 31.03.2024 and have asked them to record stock at this date.When I went into the module to change the new start date from 01.10.2023 and the end date of 31.03.2024 I was presented with an error message that the new period had to be at least 12 months.
We have many larger partnerships with April year ends and they needed an account to 30.04.2023 for the bank etc. Their new period in Xero would be expected to be 11 months to 31.03.2024.
Are we now finding out that this cannot be done in Xero and we should have told the clients we cannot prepare the 30.04.2023 account and you will have to wait so we can prepare a 23 month account.
Given it has taken Xero to mid March 2024 to release this we are very unhappy at the prospect of having to find a way around what we thought would be a straight forward update.
We are hoping this can be addressed before 31.03.2024.
Thanks
Matthew -
Ray CLARKE commented
Hi Hannah G,
As we are now less than a month until UK tax year end, can you confirm if Xero are going to implement the changes you talked about on 11 December 2023?Thanks
Ray -
Denise Scott commented
Maybe this update, which is essential for many sole trader and partnerships would have been a more important update to concentrate on than pushing the 'new invoicing' on us. I have a large number of clients who are already past their old year end date, having extended to 14, 15, 16 month years and can do nothing about it as far as reporting goes. Please give us more regular updates on when this change will go live as the clock is ticking.
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Sudipta Kumar commented
Hi,
We have changed our accounting period and so would like to know when the new feature will be available so that reports can be generated based on the new accounting period without messing up the old accounting period.
Thanks
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Ray CLARKE commented
Is there any update on this? I have been told "Soon" for months now.
We are now 5 weeks away from the start of Basis Reform. -
Emma Newcombe commented
Hi - any update on this please?
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Carla Atack commented
Hi,
This feature will be great, but how soon is soon? Will it be available in the next few weeks?
Thanks so much
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Jaine Wills commented
One of my clients recently changed their accounting period, and it would have been really useful to see the last filed accounts as the "previous" period rather than a period based on the new accounting period.