When you close a year, that year's financials are locked down from any future changes.
You can also perform a similar hard close and lock down a fiscal period from any further changes. This lock is useful to preserve a period after issuing final financials. When you lock down a fiscal period, you will be prevented from making any journal entries, posting receipts, or performing a G/L Reindex from the beginning of your fiscal year through that date. For example, if the cut off is September, then no journal entries may be done for the months of January through September. If you did run a G/L Reindex, it would therefore only be for October through December.
If you attempt to make changes that take place during the lockdown period, you will see a warning message, "Period is out of range." You'll then have to change the fiscal period lock to make the desired changes.
Permission to lock down the fiscal period is controlled by G/L Period Lock access level. See Define and assign access levels to users.
Lock down changes to fiscal period
- Go to Accounting > General Ledger > G/L Accounting Period Lock.
- Depending on your accounting configuration, type the MMYY of the Calendar Period or the Fiscal Period that you want to close. The other field will update automatically.
- Click Save.
The accounting period is now closed to any journal entries changes, posting, and reindexing.
Unlock a fiscal period
If you need to make changes after a fiscal period has been locked down, you must change the lock down period to a date prior to your desired changes. For example, if you locked down September 2019, but you then need to make changes to that month, then reset the lock to August 2019. Follow the procedure above to set the period lock.
Important: If you have locked a fiscal period, but then need to reopen your previous fiscal year as described in End of year close process, then you will need to unlock the fiscal period first. Keep in mind that after you reclose the fiscal year, Inform automatically reindexes your G/L. See General ledger re-indexing.