Closing an Accounting Period

Closing a period is how you tell URBI "the books for this month are final." Once a period is closed, nothing new can post to it by accident, and you have a clean trial balance you can hand to your board or accountant.

URBI closes a period one cash account at a time, not all at once. Some bank accounts get their statements sooner than others, so you can reconcile and close each one as its statement arrives, instead of waiting on the slowest account to close the whole period.

Applies to: Any property with GL/accounting enabled. Reconciling and closing an account is available to whoever your property's permissions have given the Manage accounting settings permission to (see the FAQ for who can do what).

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The big picture

Closing a period has three stages:

1. Reconcile and close each cash account in the period, one at a time, as statements come in.
2. Wait until every cash account is closed for that period.
3. Close the period itself, which locks the whole month and gives you a final trial balance.

You don't have to close accounts in any particular order relative to each other, but periods themselves close oldest first: if an earlier period is still open, close it before closing a newer one.

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Step by step

1. Go to the Bank tab in your accounting navigation. It opens on the Periods list by default.
2. Find the open period you want to close. Expand it to see a row for each cash account, with a status chip (green for Reconciled, gold for Closed) and that account's current difference.
3. For each account that isn't closed yet, click Balance & close to open its workspace, reconcile it, and close it. See How to Reconcile and Close a Cash Account for the full walkthrough.
4. Repeat step 3 until every cash account in the period shows Closed.
5. Once all accounts are closed, the Close Period button becomes enabled. Click it.
6. Confirm in the re-verification dialog. URBI closes the period.

If Close Period is greyed out, something is still open somewhere. See What's Blocking My Period Close? for how to find and fix it.

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What you'll see when it's done

After a period closes, you land on a closed-period review that shows:

• The period's final trial balance
• Each cash account's close status
• An audit timeline of every reconcile, close, and reopen action taken on that period, with who did it and when

Need to fix something after the fact? A closed period isn't permanent. See How to Reopen a Closed Period or Account.

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Closing the year

Year-end close, found under Settings > Accounting > Year-End Close, works alongside regular period closing rather than replacing it: it closes the final period of the fiscal year and, if you choose, moves the year's net result into a retained-earnings account you pick.

Year-end close now checks for exactly the same things a regular period close does before it will run: every earlier period must already be closed, every cash account in the final period must be locked, the property-wide Suspense balance must be at zero, and no draft journal entries can be left in that period. If any of these aren't clear, year-end close refuses with the same specific message you'd see from a regular period close (see What's Blocking My Period Close?) rather than running through and posting somewhere unexpected.

The closing account you choose, including choosing to keep the balance in cash rather than moving it, is now the one actually used. The result you're shown afterward names that account and tells you plainly whether it was locked as part of the close.