Integrated close test

An integrated close test runs a full accounting period end to end: real logistics postings during the month, finance transactions on top, then the complete close. It is the R2R equivalent of a dress rehearsal and the only test that proves the period-end works with the data the rest of the business actually produces. Contoso runs it in the QAS client 100 after integration testing and before UAT sign-off.

Logistics inputs

The close is only as good as the postings it processes. Make sure the test month contains every state the close tasks handle: goods received not invoiced and invoiced not received for GR/IR; partial deliveries; open sales orders with deliveries not billed; production orders with variances; inventory in both plants; foreign currency documents; assets acquired, depreciated and retired. Ask the logistics key users to run their own processes as they will in production, not to post finance documents directly.

• Order-to-cash: deliveries, billing, incoming payments, a credit memo and a dispute.
• Procure-to-pay: purchase orders with goods receipts and invoices in both orders, a price difference and a partial delivery.
• Plan-to-produce: production orders for CMC-ALT-100 with component CMC-RTR-200, confirmations, goods movements and a scrap variance.
• Inventory: transfers between storage locations 171A and 171B, a physical inventory difference.
• Intercompany: shipments from 1710 to 1810 straddling the period end.

Comparing with an independent expectation

At the end of the close, compare the resulting statements with the expectation model. For some lines, such as revenue from billing, the expectation is exact: you know every billing document you posted. For others, such as production variances, the expectation is a range or a hand calculation for a sample of orders. Agree with Dan in advance which lines are exact, which are sampled, and what tolerance applies to each.

Record more than pass or fail. For each close task, log the start and end time, who ran it, how many reruns were needed and why. Priya's report for the integrated test should show the critical path of the close: the longest chain of dependent tasks and how long it took. If the dependency chain from goods movement cut-off to the trial balance needed five working days in the test and the business expects a four-day close, that is a finding as important as any wrong number. Luis will also use these timings to plan the first close after go-live, when the hypercare team will be watching every task.