Opening Financial Periods: General Information

You have to open the financial periods to which users will post transactions and documents. If you need to review the statuses of periods before opening periods, you open the Master Financial Calendar (GL201000) form if the Centralized Period Management feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, or the Company Financial Calendar (GL201100) form if this feature is disabled. On either form, you click Open Periods on the More menu to navigate to the Manage Financial Periods (GL503000) form. You can also navigate to this form directly if you do not need to review the statuses of periods.
Tip: If the Centralized Period Management feature is disabled, you have to open financial periods separately in each company on the Manage Financial Periods form.

After you have opened periods, they can be used in the general ledger module and subledgers of MYOB Advanced. At any time, you can have multiple open periods; opening one period does not require you to close the previous one.

Statuses of Financial Periods

Every financial period belongs to a range of periods that have a particular status. The system can contain four period ranges, each with a different status. The following table shows the statuses, describes them, and lists the actions you can perform on the Manage Financial Periods (GL503000) form for a particular range of periods.
Status Description of a Period with This Status Actions that Can Be Performed
Inactive An inactive period has been generated in the system, but has not yet been opened. Transactions cannot be posted to the period. Open
Open An open period can be selected in documents and transactions can be posted to it. Close, Deactivate
Closed

If the Restrict Access to Closed Periods check box is selected on the General Ledger Preferences (GL102000) form, transactions can be posted to a closed period by only users assigned to the Financial Supervisor role.

If this check box is cleared, any user can post to closed periods.

 Lock, Reopen
Locked

A locked period cannot be used for data entry, or for posting in any subledgers.

You lock a period to prevent changes to period-specific data that has been verified and disclosed in reports.

 Unlock

The following diagram illustrates the statuses of financial periods in the system.

Figure 1. Financial period statuses in the system