Introduction

Financial period locking settings are available on both a organization and department (location) level. These settings are designed to prevent financial events from being backdated into previous time periods where finances have already been reconciled, such as into a previous month or year. Once the financial period is closed, no financial events such as invoices or payments can be dated before the closing date. It is recommended financial period closing is enabled as a best financial workflow standard.

Using Department Financial Period Locking Settings

Financial period locking is primarily enabled and set from a department level using a combination of 3 settings. This means each department or clinic location can independently control and customize their financial period closing behavior. Financial period locking settings are especially useful in automatically locking monthly financials after reconciliation has occurred.

All department level financial period locking settings can be found by following: Settings > Department (Location) > Department Settings > See specific setting descriptions below

1. Earliest possible date for financial events

This first financial period closing setting can be used manually, or it will automatically update when settings 2 and 3 are in use. This setting is a date entry field, such as 03/04/2022. The date entered is the date which financial events cannot be backdated past when in use. 

2. Enable automated financial period locking

When this setting is enabled, setting 3 appears for use, and it also automatically updates the date entry for setting 1. Automatic financial period locking is recommended as a best practice financial workflow standard. The automatic date entry for setting 1 will always be the last date of the previous month.

3. Financial Period Locking Date

The final financial period locking setting is the trigger date when automatic financial period closing (setting 2) updates the closed date (setting 1). The chosen date value must physically pass in time in order to trigger. This means if today's date when this setting is defined is February 20th, selecting '15' as a date value, would trigger automatic period closing on March 15th, with a financial closing date of February 28th for setting 1. If instead of '15', a value of '25' is chosen, then automatic period closing would trigger on February 25th, since the date is still available to transpire this month, and the financial closing date would be updated to January 31st for setting 1.

It is recommended a trigger date as early as possible into the new month is chosen, which also accounts for an appropriate amount of time for the previous month's financials to be reconciled. This means if the accounting staff normally requires 10 days to complete the previous month's reconciliation, you should not choose a date earlier than 10, but it would not be recommended to choose a date such as 25 which creates an unnecessary delay in financial period locking to trigger from when the finances were reconciled. Accidental financial events could be backdated in that time period between reconciliation and financial locking, which would cause the reconciliation to no longer balance.

If the chosen date value is not available in the current month (29, 30, 31), the last available day of the month is used as the triggering day that month.

Using Organization Financial Period Locking

Financial period closing can also be managed from the organization level by updating 3 settings manually when needed.

These settings can be found by following: Settings > organization > See specific setting descriptions below

2. Earliest possible date for financial events

3. Update financial period closing date for all locations