Year End Processing

We are trying to plan for our first year end processing with the HR Suite. I'm interested in known how others have handled this in the past with regards to:
1. What testing, if any, do you perform on the year end download from Lawson?
2. If you do test this, what do you do and how do you confirm it is correct?
3. Does anyone perform a complete test of the setup guidelines and run a sample payroll before doing a prod setup?

Any advice on year end would be helpful.

Thanks.