Accounting Period Setup
A user with at least Edit level of the Manage Accounting Periods permission can set up fiscal periods one period at a time or one fiscal year at a time. For more information, see:
Users with custom Accounting Center roles must have the Posting Period on Transactions permission to set up accounting periods.
If you do not use NetSuite OneWorld, you cannot disable the Accounting Periods feature if an accounting period exists. To disable the feature you must delete all created accounting periods.
In NetSuite OneWorld, if you enable the Multiple Calendars feature you can create fiscal calendars and use different accounting period rollups for your subsidiaries. The base accounting periods that roll up into these hierarchies are common to all subsidiaries.
If you use fiscal calendars and are creating an Accounting Period search (Lists > Search > Saved Search > New > Accounting Period), you can filter your search based on the fiscal calendar. For information about defining a saved search, see Defining a Saved Search. For information about fiscal calendars, see Fiscal Calendars.
For information about managing tax periods, see Working with Tax Periods.
For more information about accounting periods, see the following help topics:
Each day must belong to an accounting period to ensure accuracy in reporting.
Accounting periods cannot be set up until the Accounting Periods feature has been enabled. See Accounting Period Management.
If your system has historical transaction data and you want to use the Accounting Periods feature, enable the feature and then create an accounting period for a past quarter or month. NetSuite automatically assigns that accounting period to the transactions dated within the period's date range.
If you create an accounting period that precedes a locked period, the new period you create is locked upon creation. For example, you have created an accounting period for fiscal year 2013. The period is closed and locked. You have transactions to enter for fiscal year 2012, so you create an accounting period for that fiscal year. When you save the new period, it is saved locked to prevent mismatches and accidental general ledger impact in the periods that follow. You must manually unlock A/R and A/P in each period to enter the transactions.
When you set up or make changes to accounting periods, a batch process runs to align transactions with the appropriate accounting period. See Viewing the Status of Accounting Period Changes.
Users with View level of the Manage Accounting Periods permission can view the Manage Accounting Periods page but cannot add or edit periods.
If the Accounting Periods feature has been enabled, users can set a personal preference to view report data by period. See Reporting by Accounting Period. After this preference has been set for a user's reports, these reports cannot display results to the user until accounting periods for the entire fiscal year have been set up.