Once a fiscal year has concluded, the new fiscal year begins automatically. As such, income and expense accounts will reset to $0 without any action from the user. However, transactions can still be created and edited for the concluded fiscal year for a period of time. Ledger will automatically recalculate end-of-year transactions on the fly. Once all transactions have been entered and reports have been run, a book's fiscal year can be manually or automatically locked to prevent any additions or edits from being made.
If a fiscal year is not manually locked after 3 months following the end of that date range, it will be locked automatically. Following this, users can unlock fiscal years to make appropriate changes for 12 months after the end of the fiscal date range.
Once that time period has passed, however, it cannot be unlocked.
For example, if a fiscal year runs from January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2024, it can be closed manually anytime in the first 90 days of the new fiscal year. On April 1, 2025, the system will lock the fiscal year automatically. Users can unlock the 2024 fiscal year up through December 31, 2025, where the fiscal year will be locked indefinitely and cannot be altered any further.
To manually lock/unlock a fiscal year,
- Click on the gear icon to open your Settings view.
- Scroll down the navigation menu on the left and select “Books” under the Ledger section.
- To the right of the book name, click on the arrow button to go to that book's detail view.
- Under History, click the toggle button to lock or unlock a fiscal year. Current fiscal years cannot be locked and fiscal years that closed more than 12 months ago cannot be opened.