About Locking and Unlocking Fiscal Periods
You can lock or unlock fiscal periods for Sage 300 programs that process transactions.
- Locking or unlocking a fiscal period affects processing only after you save the fiscal calendar.
Validation occurs when dates are entered in transactions, so if users are processing transactions while you are editing the fiscal calendar, those users may not receive any warning about locked fiscal periods, and may be able to post transactions to periods you are trying to lock.
For this reason, we strongly recommend that you ensure nobody else is using the system while you edit the fiscal calendar and lock or unlock fiscal periods.
- Using the Locked Fiscal Period field on the Company Profile screen, you can specify how the system behaves if a user enters or posts a transaction to a locked fiscal period. For more information, see Company Profile Screen.
Recommended order in which to lock programs
Locking a fiscal period for a program affects the entry and posting of transactions only within that program. For this reason, we recommend that you lock periods for programs that generate transactions for other programs before you lock the programs that receive the transactions:
- Lock a fiscal period for Bank Services, Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable at the same time, before you lock the period for General Ledger.
- Lock a fiscal period for Order Entry, Purchase Orders, and Inventory Control before you lock the period for Bank Services, Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable.
Considerations for specific programs
For some programs, there are special considerations to keep in mind when locking a fiscal period:
- General Ledger. Before locking a fiscal period for General Ledger, make sure you generate all outstanding G/L batches and post them in General Ledger. Otherwise, the transactions will be placed in an error batch when you try to post them in General Ledger.
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Bank Services. If the Locked Fiscal Period field on the Company Profile screen is set to Error, locking a period for Bank Services affects other programs as follows:
- Accounts Receivable. You cannot add receipts or print refund checks for a period that is locked for Bank Services.
- Accounts Payable. You cannot print checks for a period that is locked for Bank Services.
- Inventory Control. Locking a fiscal period for Inventory Control does not prevent Day End Processing from creating transactions for another ledger. However, if the period is locked for the other ledger (say, Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable), you may not be able to post the transactions in that ledger.