Period
In accounting, period means a fiscal reporting window.
- Layer
- Lexicon
- Defined in
- Lexicon
- Components
- 10
Authority
This definition follows ASC 270.
Every citation in this system, with the text we read and the date we checked it, is in US GAAP and where these rules come from.
The lessons that teach this
Accounting, 0 to 1 — a free course taught end to end on one month of one company, with the spreadsheet exercises to work it yourself.
- 08Cash, accrual and cut-offCash accounting records when money moves. Accrual records when value moves. Every hard question in the rest of the course lives in the gap between the two.9 min
- 13Closing the monthStatements are not the end. The close proves every balance against something outside the ledger, then locks the period so the numbers can't quietly change.13 min
Period, in use
Quoted from the 32 documents that use the word — what it does to an interface, in the spec's own sentence.
It is also the workflow that generic dashboard components cannot express at all, because it depends on a concept they don't have: a period has a state, and that state governs what the UI may offer.
Rule lines span the numeric columns only, each period column independently, gutters unruled.
Blocks posting into a closed period with the cutoff explanation, not a bare rejection.
For founders
The same idea written for a founder: what it costs a startup that ignores it, and what to do in a real month.
- Period locksOnce a month is signed off, nobody can post into it. The numbers you sent the board stay the numbers.
- How to read an income statement (P&L)Revenue, cost of revenue, gross margin, operating expenses and net income, read line by line, on accrual basis, with the mistakes founders make most.
- Form 941 and payroll tax deposits for startupsWhat Form 941 reports, monthly vs semiweekly deposits, the $100,000 next-day rule, FUTA, the R&D payroll credit, and what your provider can’t do.
- What to put on an invoice: a field-by-field guideThe fields a B2B invoice needs to get paid on time: legal names, a numbering sequence, dates, terms, tax lines, PO and remit-to, and how to fix one.
What it is not called
Each of these is a real word for a different thing. Using it here is what makes a product read as though it was built by someone who has not done the work.
- date range
- timeframe
Components that render this
The concept is not documentation-only. These are the components that name it in their specification, grouped and stated exactly as the catalog states them.
4Swaps & FX
Family spec5Ledger & tables
Family spec9Accounting core (GL)
Family spec11Payables (AP)
Family spec12Close, controls & consolidation
Family specAlso in Core ledger
Work with this concept
The calculators that compute it and the ledger payloads that carry it. A definition is where a reader starts; these are where they go next.
Defined in Lexicon. This page is generated from that document, so the two cannot disagree.