Finance › Accounting Periods is a simple register of your financial years — a Begin date, an End date and an Is Closed flag for each. It is the first item under the Finance menu, and it is a record, not a lock: nothing in the finance screens refuses an entry because of it (details below).
Steps
- Go to Finance › Accounting Periods. The list shows Begin, End, Is Closed, and who created or last changed each row.
- Press Create. Pick Begin and End (both required), choose Is Closed = Yes or No, press Create.
- To change a row, press the pencil icon — the same three fields open on Update.
- The eye icon opens View: ID, Begin, End, Is Closed (Yes/No), created and updated dates and users.
- The bin icon deletes a row after a "Do you want to delete this record?" prompt.
Rules you will meet
- Begin must be before End. The screen refuses "Begin date must be before the end date." if they are the same day or reversed.
- The list column shows Is Closed as 1 or 0; the View screen translates it to Yes/No. Same value.
- Nothing stops overlapping periods — you can save two rows that cover the same months. Keep the list tidy yourself.
- Delete is immediate. No entry is attached to a period, so nothing blocks the delete and there is no undo — recreate the row if you slipped.
Common confusion: "I closed the year but entries are still going in"
That is expected. In this Finance module Is Closed is only a note for your own records. Journal Entry, Add Expense, Add Other Income, fee collection and salary posting all accept a date inside a period marked closed. Some schools have their current year marked closed and still post into it every day — that is why the flag was never turned into a lock. The separate New Ledger (Finance › Ledger Periods & Year End) does enforce its own periods, but only for entries posted in the New Ledger — it does not lock these screens.
What the period IS used for
The requisition number (Finance › Requisitions) is REQ‑year‑0001 style. The year is taken from the End date of the period that contains today's date — so a July–June school gets REQ‑2027‑… all through 2026‑27 — and the counter restarts with each period. If no period covers today, the calendar year is used instead. Is Closed is ignored here too. If your requisition numbers show the wrong year, the fix is a period on this screen that covers today.
Who can use it
The screen and its Create button follow the Finance → Fiscal Years privilege in Admin › Users & Privileges. Create is greyed out with "You are not allowed" if your user lacks it.