Time Periods

Time periods are used to define the date ranges of fiscal periods for accounting and sales forecasting purposes. You can have as many time periods as you need, including fiscal years, quarter, month, bi-weeks. The time periods have beginning and ending dates but not times--all time periods are assumed to begin and end at exactly midnight of its date. Thus, a fiscal year which spans the calendar year 2007 should begin on 2007-01-01 and end on 2008-01-01.

Time periods control the posting to the past and the future: when a past time period is closed, no transactions can be posted to it. If a future time period has not been created yet, then no transactions can be posted to it either. When a future time period is created, it is automatically considered “open” and available for posting. This can be modified fairly easily if you want to control them further.

When you close a time period, the system will ask you to close all time periods ending at a certain date, including fiscal months, quarters, and years.

Once a time period is closed the system will not let you re-open it or post to it.