Standard Process to handle Dividends during Year End Close

Hi everyone,

When we perform a GL Year-End close and open a new period, the Retained Earnings account is updated with Revenue minus Expense of previous year and all the Revenue and Expense accounts start at $0 for the new year. As the Dividend account is created as an Equity account, it is not considered for calculating the Retained Earnings (which should be Revenue - Expense - Dividend). What is the standard way to handle the Dividends after the Year-End close? Should we be doing a manual reclass entry or is there a standard procedure?

We are on R12.1.3.

Thanks for your time,