Period locking

What this does

The Lock Date under Accounting → Settings is the last day of the closed period. Nothing posts on or before it: no invoice issue, no payment, no deposit, no check, no journal entry, no import, no Stripe payout. A post that lands on a locked date is refused with the reason, and the business record (the invoice, say) still saves so nothing is lost; it just doesn't reach the ledger until the lock is moved or overridden.

Steps

Set the lock. After a month is reconciled and reported, Set Lock Date to the last day of that month. Move it forward each month.

Remove the lock. Remove Lock Date clears it. Do this only to re-open a period on purpose.

Temporary override. Temporarily Unlock Period opens the lock for 30, 60, 120, or 240 minutes with a required Reason. Use it for a known correction: post the fix, and the lock closes itself when the time runs out. The override and its reason are recorded; the history shows Override Started and Override Expired with the previous lock.

Why you'd use it

A locked period is what makes last month's P&L stay the same number tomorrow. Without it, a late-entered receipt or a re-dated payment silently changes reports you've already acted on.

Common problems

"Posting blocked: date is on or before the lock date." Either the transaction's date is wrong (fix the date) or it belongs in the closed period (use a temporary override with a reason, or post it dated the first open day with a note).

The override expired before I finished. Start another one. Each is logged.

An import skipped some rows. Imports honour the lock; rows dated on or before it are skipped so pre-lock history stays off the P&L. That's intended; use AR onboarding for the opening balance instead.