In terms of Section 40(1)(c) of the Public Finance Management Act, this department must submit annual financial statements to the Auditor-General by 31 May 2008. It is therefore necessary to close the Department's books before 30 April 2008. The envisaged closing date is 18 April 2008. Forced closure will be activated by the National Treasury in the event that a department has failed to close its books on time and for this reason an urgent appeal is made to all parties to take note of the following paragraphs to ensure that the requirements and responsibilities have been met.

Payments can technically be processed up till the 31 March 2008. However, an urgent appeal is made to all roleplayers to process as many payments as possible for the current financial year by Wednesday, 26 March 2008, as the BAS response time may be adversely affected by congestion from other state departments. LOGIS payments should be completed by no later than 28 March 2008.

T&S advances do not affect the closing of the financial year but the normal BAS payment run dates will still apply. However, because T&S expenditure is only charged against voted funds once the claim has been processed, it is important that all outstanding claims in respect of the 2007/2008 financial year are processed timeously. Due to the fact that these claims and advances are processed on PERSAL, they should be submitted by no later than, 24 March 2008. Any claims submitted after the aforementioned date will be charged to the 2008/2009 financial year. All differences in the event of a claim being less than the advance must be repaid before 28 March 2008.

All offices responsible for issuing BAS receipts must ensure that receipts in respect of March 2008, irrespective of deposit date, must be accounted for in the accounting month March (03) and that all pending receipts have been allocated on BAS.

All petty cash expenditure up to 31 March 2008 must be accounted for during March 2008.

It is imperative that the correct posting date is used on BAS at all times, especially when journal entries i.r.o. corrections for the 2007/2008 financial year are being captured during April. All authorisers must also ensure that journals captured in respect of March 2008 are authorised timeously within their workflows.

All outstanding transactions with a status of open, reject, to be rejected, incompl, tobeact, tobeau and rejauth must be maintained, authorised or cancelled. An Outstanding Transactions Report per functional area (payment, journals, etc.) can be requested on BAS at the Reporting functionality (Other Reports). The responsible users can be identified from this report for the purposes of finalising the outstanding transactions. Alternatively, an Outstanding Transaction Enquiry dialogue can be viewed for the outstanding transactions for the Creditor Management and Creditor Payment functional areas. The due date for outstanding transactions to be cleared is 31 March 2008.

The responsible officials must ensure that all Bank and Persal interface exceptions are cleared before final closure. The BAS System Controller must ensure that all Persal runs have interfaced with BAS and that the bank interfaces have taken place.

The Banking section must ensure that all urgent payments (NAPS) have been captured on BAS in respect of the 2007/2008 financial year. A bank reconciliation must be compiled i.r.o. of March 2008 to balance to the bank statement as at 31 March 2008.

In order to classify Assets and Liabilities accounts correctly on the financial statements, it is imperative that the necessary steps are taken to clear these accounts to reflect the correct balances, e.g. credit balances on debt accounts, etc. In instances where debit amounts do not relate to credit amounts ( and vice versa ), the debits and credits must be specified and aged separately on the financial statements by the responsible officials with the necessary supporting documentation. In the case of investment accounts of special funds, the balances must be reconciled for final statement purposes.

In respect of amounts owing by and to other departments it is a requirement that certificates of confirmation of amounts outstanding are submitted for audit purposes for each department with whom the WCED has transacted. The confirmation letters must be sent out within one month after year-end (18 April) and be returned by not later than 16 May 2008, to enable departments to disclose the correct balances in their financial statements.

All revenue received for the financial year should be allocated and paid over to the Provincial Revenue Fund on or before 31 March 2008.

The preliminary closure of the 2007/2008 financial year ended 31 March 2008, will take place on 11 April 2008. This implies that only the Section Clearances of the Directorate: Financial Accounting, will be able to process further adjustments (journals) in respect of March 2008 before final closure which will take place on 18 April 2008. All BAS users are requested to ensure that all the necessary adjustments are authorised before the above-mentioned preliminary closing date, i.e. 11 April 2008.