Closing the Books
Overview
The Closing the Books feature in CustomBooks™ helps protect historical financial data by restricting changes to transactions dated before a specified closing date.
Closing the books is recommended after you have finalized a reporting period, filed the applicable taxes, or completed your account reconciliations. Once a closing date is set, CustomBooks™ can prevent users from modifying or saving transactions dated before that date.
Depending on your settings, users can either receive a warning when attempting to make changes to a closed period or be required to enter a password before the changes can be saved.
Scope of Closing
You can choose how broadly the closing date applies to your books:
- Single Closing Date – Sets one closing date that applies to all books.
- Specify closing date per module – Allows you to establish different closing dates for individual accounting modules.
The per-module option can be useful when different areas of your accounting are finalized at different times.
Closing Date Warning Type
CustomBooks™ provides two options for determining how the system handles changes to transactions dated before the closing date.
Only warn
Users receive a warning when they attempt to modify or save a transaction dated before the closing date. After acknowledging the warning, they can continue with the change.
Warn and require password
Users receive a warning and must enter the designated closing password before they can save changes to transactions dated before the closing date.
How to set the Closing Date
To configure the closing date:
- Navigate to the Admin Panel → Accounting Settings.
- Scroll down and expand the Closing the books section.
- In the Closing Date field, enter the date you want to use as the cutoff date. You can also select the date using the calendar icon.
- Optional: To set different closing dates for individual modules, select Specify closing date per module and configure the appropriate dates.
- Under Closing Date Warning Type, select one of the following:
- Only warn
- Warn and require password
- If you selected Warn and require password, enter a secure password in the Password field.
- If a password has already been configured, select Set new password to replace it.
- Your changes are saved automatically. There is no Save button on the Accounting Settings page.
For a quick overview of the process and guided steps, please watch the video below.
What Happens After the Books Are Closed?
After a closing date has been configured, CustomBooks™ checks the date of transactions that users attempt to modify or save.
If a transaction is dated before the closing date, the system applies the selected closing-date restriction:
- With Only warn, the user can acknowledge the warning and continue.
- With Warn and require password, the user must provide the designated password before the change can be saved.
This provides an additional layer of protection for finalized accounting periods and helps prevent accidental changes to historical financial information.
Best Practices
Before setting a closing date, it is recommended that you:
- Complete your account reconciliations for the period.
- Review and finalize the applicable financial reports.
- Complete required tax filings for the period, when applicable.
- Confirm that transactions for the period are complete and accurate.
- Determine whether a single closing date or separate closing dates by module better fits your accounting workflow.
- Use Warn and require password when you want additional control over changes to finalized periods.
Note: Closing the books is intended to protect finalized historical data. Before setting a closing date, make sure that all necessary corrections and adjustments for the period have been completed.
If you need any further help or assistance, don't hesitate to reach out to our support team. You can contact us via live chat, email, or by submitting a support request ticket through our Help and Support page.