Accounting Periods and Closing

A journal belongs to an accounting period as well as a date. Periods let the business say a month is finished and have that mean something.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → ERP - Finance:

Accounting Periods — open and close each period
Ledger — the trial balance you review before closing

What closing does

Closing stops further postings being dated into that period. That is the whole mechanism and it is enough: the figures reported for that month can no longer change, so a statement produced from them stays true.

Without it, a late invoice dated into a closed month silently changes a figure somebody has already circulated to a board.

A late transaction

Post it into the current open period rather than reopening the old one.

Reopening invalidates everything already reported from that period. Posting into the current one is visible and explicable. Where the timing genuinely matters for reporting, an accrual in the closed period and a reversal in the new one is the accounting answer — and both are ordinary, visible postings.

Before you close

Clear the feed inbox — an unprocessed item at close means the period is missing transactions.
Confirm documents that should have posted have reached the status that posts them.
Run depreciation for the period.
Run any allocations.
Run the calculated-field recalculation sweep if there have been imports.
Review the trial balance and confirm it balances and looks sane against last month.

Closing is a decision, not a routine

Do not automate it on a schedule. Closing asserts that the figures are final, and that assertion should be made by a person who has looked at them — not by a timer that fires on the fifth working day whether anybody checked or not.

Reporting afterwards

Because amounts were translated at post time and postings are immutable, a report over a closed period is reproducible indefinitely. The number you quote in March is the number the system still gives in December — which is the whole payoff for the discipline.

Worked example

A finance team closes on the fourth working day. The checklist is a saved report showing unprocessed feed items, unposted approved documents, and whether depreciation has run. All three must be clear before the trial balance is reviewed and the period closed. A supplier invoice arriving on day six is posted into the new period with an accrual in the old one where it is material.

Recommendations

Build the pre-close checklist as a saved report so it is checked rather than remembered.
Never reopen a closed period to accommodate one transaction.
Close on a fixed working day so everyone knows the cut-off.
Compare the trial balance to last month before closing — anomalies are obvious side by side.