“I can’t edit this invoice”: locked and closed periods
“I can’t edit this invoice.” I hear it almost every month-start.
Most of the time, the answer is the accounting period.
The two stages of a period
- Locked: you lock modules such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, or all of them. It limits who can post.
- Closed: nobody can make changes that affect the general ledger. To correct something, you have to reopen the period.
What you can still do
- In a locked period, users with the Override Period Restrictions permission can edit posting transactions.
- If the period has Allow Non-G/L Changes checked, changes that don’t touch the general ledger, like the memo, are allowed with the matching permission.
- Non-posting transactions, such as sales orders, aren’t subject to this restriction.
Rule of thumb: only a few people get the Override permission, and every change in a locked period is documented. A clean month-end close protects the numbers you’ve already reported.