Period close and corrections

Periods close on your accounting calendar, not on Beacon’s. Beacon reads that a period has closed and changes how it treats the figures in it. It does not close a period, and it never closes one for you.

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Definition

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How it behaves

Before close. Figures for the period are live and refine continuously. Beacon shows actuals up to the last closed period by default; anything shown beyond that boundary is marked partial rather than presented as settled. After close. The values do not move. A chart of a closed quarter read today and read in two years shows the same numbers. A correction is never a retroactive overwrite. It is a versioned edit carrying who made it, when, the value before, the value after, and the stated reason. Both values are kept — the figure as it stood at close, so a report that quoted it still reconciles, and the corrected figure. Views show the corrected value by default; the original stays retrievable. A late post from a connected system does not move a closed period on its own. If one of your sources amends or reposts a transaction dated into a period Beacon has already recorded as closed, Beacon surfaces it and waits. It becomes a correction when a person decides it should, with the same record as any other — who, when, before, after, and why. A closed period never moves because a connector said so. A figure taken while its period is still open is provisional. It is labelled as such and re-taken at close, rather than being promoted silently.

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Constraints

• Your close calendar is configured at setup. It is yours; Beacon has no calendar of its own to impose.
• Beacon never edits a figure in your accounting system. A correction is recorded on Beacon’s side of the line, against Beacon’s own copy.
• A sealed forecast is not corrected. It is superseded by a later one, and both stay readable. See Sealed and live figures.
• A closed period does not stop a figure being recalculated for a later period from the same data. It stops the closed period’s own values moving.

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