Closed Accounting Periods Overview

A closed accounting period marks a point in time where your books are finalized. Once you close a period, no new entries can be made to transactions dated on or before that date, protecting the accuracy of financial statements you've already shared with your accountant, investors, or other stakeholders.

Setting a closing date in ServiceCore helps you keep a clean cutoff between what's settled and what's still open, so your reports stay reliable as your business grows.

Before You Start

Here are a few things to know before you continue:

• To see if you have access to this feature in ServiceCore, please check out this article on user permission levels.
• You can adjust your Closing Date at any time.
• Closed Accounting Periods affect invoices, recurring invoices, payments, refunds, and credit memos.

Set Your Closing Date

Setting a Closing Date tells ServiceCore that all transactions dated on or before that date are final. Close a period only after you've reviewed and reconciled your accounts for that timeframe. Closing should be your last step, not a routine one, since it locks in your books.

To set up a Closed Accounting Period, follow these steps:

1. Click your name in the top right corner.
2. Click “Settings.”
3. Within Company settings, select “Preferences.”
   • Please Note: When you open Settings, you’ll always land on Company > Information. 

4. Click the "Accounting" header to open.
    

   

    

5. Select a date for Closed Accounting Period: Closing Date.

6. Click Save.

   

Invoices, Recurring Invoices, and Credit Memos

Once you've set a Closing Date, ServiceCore checks that date any time someone tries to create, edit, void, or delete a transaction dated on or before it.

If the transaction date falls on or before the Closing Date, you'll see a warning that proceeding will affect the correctness and balance of your books.

• Billing Staff, Admin, or Owner permission level will be able to submit the transaction.
• All other permission levels will be blocked from creating or editing the transaction.

Payment and the Application Date

Payments have an Application Date field that controls which accounting period a payment counts toward on your AR Aging Report. This field respects your Closed Accounting Period settings.

• You can't set an Application Date inside a closed period. 
• If the default Application Date would fall inside a closed period, ServiceCore automatically moves it forward to the earliest open date.

To learn more about how the Application Date works, please check out this article on the Payment Application Date.

Recurring Invoices and Batch Billing

Recurring invoices and batch billing also follow your Closed Accounting Period settings.

• If a recurring invoice's billing start date falls inside a closed period, that invoice is automatically left out of batch billing runs, regardless of your permission level.
• If you need to create that invoice anyway, you can still generate it manually, as long as you have permission to edit closed accounting periods.

Emailing Receipts in Closed Periods

You can email a paid receipt for an invoice dated in a closed accounting period, even without permission to edit closed accounting periods. Emailing a receipt doesn't change any information on the transaction, so it isn't blocked the way edits are.

Please Note: You still can't update the email address on a closed-period invoice without permission to edit closed accounting periods. Only the ability to send the existing receipt is allowed.

For QuickBooks Users

If you have a closing date set in your QuickBooks account, we recommend you take the following steps to help prevent unwanted sync errors between ServiceCore and QuickBooks:

1. Login to your QuickBooks account.
2. Write down or make note of the closing date in your QuickBooks account.
3. Login to your ServiceCore account.
4. Navigate to Settings > Company > Preferences.
5. Click the "Accounting" header to open.
6. Select the same date for Closed Accounting Period: Closing Date.
7. Click Save.
   
    

If you have any questions, please reach out to our Support team through the chat widget on the bottom of this page or by sending an email to support@servicecore.com!