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Period Close

Period statuses, the ten-item close checklist with its four blockers, reopening, locking and the absence of a year-end routine.

AccountantFinance ManagerSuper AdminLast reviewed 03 Aug 2026

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Financial Reports

Accounting periods divide your financial year into months (or quarters) and control when transactions may be posted. Manage them at Accounting > Transactions > Period Close, which shows every period as a calendar or a list with its status and checklist progress.

Period Statuses

  • Open — transactions can be posted to dates inside the period. All periods in a fiscal year are created open, so more than one is open at a time.
  • Closed — no new postings, but the period can still be reopened.
  • Locked — permanently closed. It cannot be reopened: the system answers “Cannot reopen a locked period. Management approval required.”

You can only act on periods that belong to your own organisation. Legacy periods with no organisation can only be changed by a Super Admin.

Periods must exist before you can post. Saving a journal entry checks that an open period covers the entry date. If none exists you get “No accounting period found for date ... Please create the period first.” There is currently no screen that creates a fiscal year's periods, so ask your administrator to have them set up if the Period Close screen is empty.

The Close Checklist

Select a period to see a ten-item checklist. Four items are mandatory and marked with an asterisk — the Close Period button stays disabled until all four are ticked:

  1. All transactions posted to GL (required).
  2. Bank reconciliation complete (required).
  3. AR/AP reconciliation complete (required).
  4. Trial balance balanced (required).

The remaining six — VAT returns submitted, fixed asset depreciation, accruals posted, prepayments amortised, intercompany reconciliation and management review — are recommended but do not block the close. Tick boxes are only editable while the period is open.

Closing a Period

Click Close Period and confirm. On top of the checklist, the system validates the close: the previous period must already be closed, and draft (unposted) transactions dated inside the period block the close. The period is then stamped with who closed it and when, and the action is written to the audit trail.

After that, posting to a date in the period is refused with “Cannot post ... to closed period ... Please reopen the period first.”

Reopening and Locking

A closed period offers Reopen and Lock Permanently. Reopening requires a reason of at least ten characters and is refused if any later period in the fiscal year has already been closed or locked. Every reopen is counted and shown on the period, and logged to the audit trail.

Reopening is not restricted by role: any user who can open the Period Close screen — including a plain Accountant — can reopen a closed period in their own organisation. If a period must not be reopened after sign-off, use Lock Permanently.

Year End

There is no automated year-end routine. TravelFlow does not generate closing entries, does not roll revenue and expenses into retained earnings, and does not create next-year opening balances. Post your year-end closing entries as manual journal entries, and load opening balances for a new set of books through Accounting > Transactions > Data Import with the Opening Balances entity type.

Tip: Close each month within a week or two of month end. The longer a period stays open, the more likely a late entry lands in a month you have already reported on.