Annual accounts
Start an annual accounts cycle
Open an annual accounts cycle for a financial year, and understand every status a cycle can show.
An annual accounts cycle is one financial year, for one company, from the first draft of the resolutions through to the signed filing package. A company has one cycle per financial year, and they stack up over time into that company's fiscal year chain.
You work on cycles from the company: open the company and choose its Finance tab.
Two ways a cycle starts
Automatically, when you import an RCS extract. Importing creates a cycle for the financial year you chose, if that company does not have one yet. See Import a company from an RCS extract.
By hand, with Start a new cycle. On the Fiscal-Year Chain card there are three actions: Import Historical Accounts, Import RCS Extrait and Start a new cycle. Choose Start a new cycle for a year that has no cycle yet.
The Start a new cycle dialog
You fill in five fields:
- Fiscal year start and fiscal year end
- Meeting date, the date of the general meeting that approves the accounts
- Result amount
- Result type, either Profit or Loss
Spyral prefills these from last year's cycle and from any annual accounts already on file for that company. Check them rather than accepting them. The dialog says as much.
The financial year period is set here and cannot be edited afterwards.
A cycle created automatically from an RCS import always assumes a financial year running 1 January to 31 December, whatever the extract says the company's year end is. If the company closes on 30 June, that cycle is wrong from the start, and its filing deadline is wrong with it.
Configure does not fix this. Configure carries a single Financial Year field, which is the year printed on the resolutions. It does not change the start and end dates the cycle was created with, and it does not recalculate the deadline.
For a company whose year does not run January to December, open the year with Start a new cycle and enter the real dates, rather than working with the cycle the import created.
What happens when a cycle opens
Spyral calculates the filing deadline from the financial year end and schedules the reminder emails for that cycle. Nothing is sent to anyone yet. See Deadlines and reminders.
The cycle appears in two places on the Finance tab. The Fiscal-Year Chain card shows one small chip per financial year, latest first. The Workflow Timeline table shows the same years as rows, with the status, deadline, document count and the action available on each.
The four tiles above them count Fiscal Years, In Progress, Filed and Overdue for that company.
What each status means
This is the full list. The status shown on a cycle decides which button you get.
| Status | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Not started | The cycle exists. No documents have been produced yet. | Configure, Generate |
| Board approval, out for signature | The two resolutions have been produced. See the note below: this label covers both "ready to send" and "sent, waiting". | Configure and Dispatch before sending. Signature progress after. |
| Board resolution signed | Every manager has signed. Spyral is sending the shareholder resolution. | Nothing. It moves on by itself. |
| Shareholder approval, out for signature | The shareholder resolution is with the shareholder. | Nothing. Watch the signature panel. |
| Shareholder resolution signed | Both resolutions are signed. | Filing Package |
| Filed | The filing package has been downloaded. | Nothing. The row shows Ready for LBR. |
| Board resolution declined | A manager declined, or the request was voided. | Send again |
| Shareholder resolution declined | The shareholder declined, or the request was voided. | Send again, with the caveat in Track signatures |
| Historical | A financial year whose accounts you imported, with no approval cycle attached. | View, which opens the historical import |
One status label is misleading. A cycle whose documents have been generated but not yet sent already reads Board approval, out for signature. Nothing is out for signature at that point and nobody has been emailed.
Tell the two apart by the buttons on the row. If you can still see Configure and Dispatch, nothing has been sent. If the row shows a signature panel counting signatures instead, it is genuinely out.
Filter names use different words
Where cycles are filtered, two of the filters use their own wording for the same states. Extract ready means Not started. Dispatch ready means the documents exist and can be sent.
Starting a second cycle for the same year
Nothing stops you opening a second cycle for a financial year that already has one. It is occasionally the only way out of a stuck cycle, but it leaves two rows for that year in the fiscal year chain and both count towards the tiles. Avoid it unless you have been told to.
Next
Fill in the financial data and the signers: Configure the cycle and confirm signers.