Managing your financial data securely requires clear boundaries for your reporting periods. Develop a strong compliance strategy by locking transactions after an accounting period ends to reduce the chance of errors in past reports and balances. After a period ends, you have a buffer period to add and reverse transactions or reprocess reservations before they are locked.
Important:
Once the transactions lock, only users with an Admin role can make changes.
Manage locking periods
Guiding your financial cycle with consistent timelines keeps your data reliable. Guesty recommends keeping the default setup, where accounting periods end monthly and transactions lock on the 10th day of the following month. However, you can customize these dates to fit your business needs.
You can change the locking period date at any point. The new date applies to all future periods, but it does not change past, already-locked periods retroactively. For example, if your current locking period is the 10th of the month and you change it to the 15th, the new 15th deadline applies to upcoming periods going forward.
Understanding date adjustments
When you customize your timelines, the system manages the start and end dates together, but requires you to manage the lock date manually:
Start and end dates are linked: Changing the start date automatically shifts the end date to maintain a full month or year cycle.
Lock dates are independent: Changing the start date does not automatically update the transaction lock date. You must review and manually update the lock date to ensure your buffer period remains accurate.
For example, you want a shorter buffer period of five days to close your books:
If your period ends on the last day of the month, adjust the lock date to the 5th of the following month.
If your period ends on the 5th of the following month, keep the default lock date as the 10th of the following month.
Follow the steps below to customize your locking period settings.
Set locking period monthly
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the side navigation menu, click
Accounting to open the dropdown menu. - Under Accounting setup, select Locking period.
Select Every month under How often will an accounting period lock?.
Define the timeframe under When does the period start and end?. By default, the period starts on the 1st of the month and ends on the last day of the month. If you change the start date, the end date automatically adjusts.
Choose when to finalize data under When do transactions lock after a period ends?. By default, transactions lock on the 10th day of the following month. If you changed the start date in step 5, manually update the lock date if needed to match your desired buffer time.
In the top-right corner, click Update accounting period.
Set locking period yearly
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the side navigation menu, click Accounting to open the dropdown menu.
Under Accounting setup, select Locking period.
Select Every year under How often will an accounting period lock?.
Define the timeframe under When does the period start and end?. By default, the period starts on January 1 and ends on December 31. If you change the start date, the end date automatically adjusts.
Choose when to finalize data under When do transactions lock after a period ends?. By default, transactions lock on March 1 of the following year. If you changed the start date in step 5, manually update the lock date if needed to match your desired buffer time.
In the top-right corner, click Update accounting period.
