Close an accounting period
Lock a month so nothing new can post into it — and reopen it, on the record, when something genuinely has to go back.
Do this at month end, once you've reconciled and you're satisfied the month is finished. Closing a period stops anything new from posting into it, so the numbers you reported stay the numbers that are there next week.
Find it under Accounting, then Periods.
How periods work here
A period is a calendar month, worked out in your shop's timezone — which is why setting that correctly matters. A ticket closed at 6:30pm on the 31st belongs to that month, not the next one. (If you haven't confirmed your timezone yet, do that first in shop settings.)
A month with no history is open. Nothing has to be created, enabled or opened at the start of a month — periods only get a record the first time somebody closes one. A shop that never closes anything works exactly as it always did.
Open Accounting, then Periods. You'll see the last 18 months, newest first, with the current month marked current. Anything you've closed before stays listed even if it's older than that.
Find the month you're closing and click Close. Meridian asks you to confirm, and reminds you that nothing will be able to post into it until it's reopened — and that reopening is recorded with a reason.
Confirm. The row flips to Closed, and the History column fills in with your name and the date.
Reopening a closed month
Sometimes something genuinely has to go back — a vendor bill for the 28th that turned up a week late, a correction you can't put anywhere else.
Click Reopen on the closed month. A panel opens under the table.
Type why. The reason box needs a real sentence — a few characters won't do, and the Reopen period button stays greyed out until you've written something. Say what needs to post, e.g. Vendor bill from the 28th arrived after close.
Click Reopen period, post what you needed to post, then close the month again.
The reopen stays on the record even after you close the month again — an amber line in the History column, showing who reopened it and why. That's deliberate: an auditor asking "was this month ever reopened?" should be able to see the answer without taking anyone's word for it.
Who can do what
| View | Close | Reopen | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Manager | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Accounting | ✅ | ✅ | — |
| Everyone else | — | — | — |
Accounting can close but not reopen, on purpose: a control that anyone who can use it can also undo isn't much of a control. Reopening is an owner-or-manager decision.
What happens behind the scenes
- A closed month refuses new postings outright — it doesn't warn and let them through. That applies to everything that touches the books: invoicing a ticket, taking a payment, receiving stock, transfers, cores, vendor returns, cash-drawer sessions.
- It applies to everyone, including the owner. There's no override on the screen. If something has to go into a closed month, you reopen it, post, and close it again — which is exactly the trail you'd want.
- Closing a month that's already closed does nothing (it's not an error), and neither does reopening one that was never closed.
- The History column shows the most recent reopen. If a month has been reopened more than once, the full sequence — every close and every reopen, with reasons — is in the audit log under Settings, then Audit Log, which owners and managers can read.
Troubleshooting
If you're posting into a month you've closed, the save will fail. Right now that comes back as a generic error rather than a message naming the period, so it isn't obvious — check the Periods screen for the month the transaction is dated into. If it's closed, either date the transaction into an open month, or reopen the month, post, and close it again.
You don't have accounting access. The menu item is currently shown to everyone, but the screen itself is limited to owners, managers and accounting — so it bounces you without explaining. Ask your owner or manager to change your role or permissions under Settings, then Users & Permissions.
Check that the Reopen period button in the panel isn't greyed out — it stays disabled until you've typed a reason of at least a few characters. If you're accounting rather than an owner or manager, you won't have a Reopen button at all.
Period assignment was corrected going forward, not backwards. Months closed before your shop's timezone was applied still use the old calculation, which for shops west of UTC could push the last few hours of the last day of the month into the following month. Nothing is missing or unbalanced — it's a question of which month a handful of late-evening transactions sit in. Talk to your accountant before restating anything.
No. Only months up to and including the current one offer a Close button.