Lock a period and close the year

Steps

1. Open Settings & Close and choose Accounting. Under Period lock set Lock all periods through and choose Apply lock. Entries dated on or before that date are refused while the lock is in place. An owner or admin can remove or move the lock. Settings temporarily lifts it for its year-end closing entry and restores it afterwards.
2. To correct something inside a locked period, either date the correction after the lock or remove the lock, post, and apply it again.
3. Under Year-end close choose Close the fiscal year ended (prior or current year) and choose Post closing entry. Closing posts a real journal entry dated the last day of the year, so it appears in the audit trail like everything else — and can be reversed if it was done in error.
4. Closed years are listed under the card with the entry number. After closing, the Income Statement for the new year starts from zero and the Balance Sheet carries the result in retained earnings.
5. Lock the closed year afterwards so nothing is posted back into it.

What you should see

The toolbar shows Locked through (date) on every screen, and the closing entry appears in Journal Entries.

If it goes wrong

If a closing entry was posted for the wrong year, reverse it from Journal Entries and post the right one. If a posting is refused by the lock, the message says so; it is not a lost entry.

Related guides

• Close a month
• Correct a mistake without deleting history
• Run, save and export reports