12.1.3 Upgradation - Period Close Compulsory?

Hi Experts,

We are upgrading one of our client's instance from 11.5.10.2 to 12.1.3. and implementing new functionalities such as

1) Payment Clearing

2) Customer Acceptance for Receivable, Revenue & Cogs recognition

3) Bank Statement Auto reconciliation

4) Bank Account transfer

5) Budgetory Control.

6) India Localization Tax and Settlement.

7) Fixed Assets Tax Book functionality.

Also we are implementing new modules like MRP, WIP, Quality......

Client are still to be closed (Hard Close) last fiscal year (Apr-14 to Mar-15) in the system since audit is pending. We are going live on July 2015.

Kindly advise the best practise for my below clarifications:

1) Is Year End (Hard close) compulsory for the fiscal year (Apr-15 to Mar-15)