Closing a Period
How Bkper handles period closing through continuous balance values, period reporting with date ranges, and locking periods to prevent changes.
Closing a book is a concept rooted in the early days of bookkeeping and accounting. Physical books were used to write down each transaction, and at some point those books reached their last page. To solve this, closing entries were recorded in that book and opening entries in a new one, so balances could carry forward correctly.
From closing books came the concept of closing a period. If a book was closed after a fixed period, performance could be measured on a time basis. This became a standard practice — an important moment to assess how an entity performed, understand its new position, and share the results through standard reports.
These concepts became so deeply rooted in bookkeeping that many systems inherited them. But what if a book has no physical limitations, and entries can be endless?
Continuous balance values
The most significant difference with a traditional book or system is Bkper’s concept of continuous balance values. Balance values in Bkper are updated and audited on every posted transaction. Each posted transaction updates both the position and the performance up to that moment.
For the conceptual overview of how balances work in Bkper, see Core Concepts — Balances.
The position of permanent accounts closes any previous period at midnight, and non-permanent accounts are zeroed at midnight. The midnight balance values initialize the position for any coming period. (Midnight is defined by the timezone set on the book.)
This automatically means that permanent account balances carry over to a new financial year, while non-permanent accounts start the new year at zero.
The running balance of a bank account, shown above, illustrates this concept — the closing value of one day becomes the starting value for the next.
Since there is no limitation on the number of transactions in a Bkper book, there is no need to close a book. You simply continue recording transactions on the same book for as long as needed.
Closing a period
Different from closing a book is the concept of closing a period. Since balances in Bkper are updated and audited on each posted transaction, there is no specific action required to close one period and open another. You can simply continue recording transactions.
Reporting a period
With an endless book of transactions, continuous balance values, and no closing date — how do you report a period in Bkper?
Since balances are updated on each posted transaction and each midnight closes the previous period, a dynamically selected date range reports both the performance and the closing position of that period.
Learn how to use dates and periods for reports in the Query Guide.
To illustrate, consider a book that holds transactions from January 2018 through February 2020. To report the position (balance sheet) for 2018, query:
on:12/31/2018And for 2019:
on:12/31/2019To report the performance (profit & loss) for 2018, query:
after:01/01/2018 before:01/01/2019And for 2019:
after:01/01/2019 before:01/01/2020Locking a period
To prevent spontaneous, malicious, or erroneous modifications to a reported or audited period, a lock date can be set on each book. Once a lock date is set, no modifications or transactions can be recorded before that date. Only book owners and editors can change the lock date to an earlier date.
This is the option that most closely resembles closing a period in Bkper.
