Overview

Locking periods play a crucial role in lease accounting software, ensuring data integrity and preventing unauthorized alterations during specific stages of the accounting cycle.

In EZLease, where accuracy and compliance are paramount, locking periods serve as a safeguard, preventing users from affecting accounting in closed periods. For example, if a user tried to add a new lease that starts in a closed period, they will be forced to select a booking date in an open period. EZLease will leave the closed periods as-is and make a catch-up entry in the open period. We recommend that all clients leverage this feature to strengthen their internal controls.

This article explains the functionality of locking periods within EZLease, their significance, and best practices for their implementation.

What are locking periods?

Locking periods refers to predetermined time intervals during which lease accounting data becomes inaccessible for modification (revision) or editing. These periods typically coincide with critical phases of the accounting process, such as month-end closing, quarterly reporting, or annual audits. By imposing restrictions on data alterations during closed periods, locking periods uphold the integrity of your leasing information and ensure adherence to regulatory standards.

Setting up Locking Periods

Set up

To enable locking periods, go to File > System Options > Fiscal Dates tab and check the Enabling closing periods checkbox. You will be prompted to select the current open period and click Apply.

EZLease will display a full list of open periods for the year and tell you which periods are open or closed.

Changing current open period

To change the current open period, select Change open period at the bottom fiscal periods list in System Options > Fiscal Dates.

Note: If you need to re-open a period that is more than a full fiscal year in the past, you will need to disable locking periods and then re-enable it once you're done making your changes.

Actions disallowed in closed periods

Adding a new lease

If a user attempts to add a lease, the booking date will default to the first date of the earliest open period. Users will receive the below error if they try to save a new lease using a booking date in a closed period:

Making financial changes to an existing lease

If a user makes financial changes to an existing lease, and that lease has activity in a closed period, you will be required to book the changes in an open period. After making financial changes, when the user selects Save lease, the Financial changes found window will pop up (See: Revise vs Replace). The Revision Booking Date will default to the first date of the earliest open period, and the user will only be able to save the changes as a new revision.

If the lease does not have activity in a closed period, the user could instead choose to save the changes using Replace, which will overwrite the last version of the lease, rather than creating a revision to the lease.

In areas of EZLease where a user must choose a date prior to seeing the Financial changes found pop-up, such as selecting a variable payment or early termination date, EZLease will not allow selecting a date in a closed period. Instead, users will see a variation of the error messages below:

Actions allowed in closed periods

Descriptive [Non-financial] changes

Any changes to descriptive lease fields, such as adding notice dates, updating user-defined fields, and changing account numbers are allowed in closed periods. As a control to understand when such changes have been made to a lease, review the Audit Trail report.

Deleting and purging old leases

Leases that were expired or early terminated before the start of the current fiscal year can be deleted by admin users (See: Role-based access controls). This applies to deleting either an individual lease or multiple lease delete operation.

For example, if the current open period is in 2025 and a lease that expired in 2023, that lease can be deleted. Any leases ending in 2024; however, cannot be deleted. This enables admin users to effectively remove old leases from EZLease without risking changes in the current or previous fiscal year.

Non-admin users cannot delete any leases with activity in a closed period, even if the leases were expired or early terminated prior to the current fiscal year.

Additional notes

In rare cases, when the EZLease accounting engine is updated, reporting outputs in closed period may change as they will be generated using the newest accounting engine available at the time the report is created. All accounting changes are published online ahead of time.
The built-in Purge Old leases function does not currently respect closed periods. This function is only available to admin users and lets a user set a date and EZLease will delete all leases that were expired or early terminated before that date. Locking periods will be expanded to include controls for the purge old leases function in a future release.
Changing your fiscal calendar (i.e. going from a 4-4-5 or a 4-5-4 year) will disable the locking periods feature and force you to choose a new open period that aligns with the new fiscal calendar.
EZLease does not track when periods are opened or closed. We recommend limiting the number of users given an admin role, which is the only role than can change the current open period. Additionally, the Audit Trail report will show all changes to leases, making it easy to determine if changes were made in a closed period for some reason and view a revision note to understand why the change was made.
EZLease does not currently support catch-up entries for terminations. If a lease was terminated in a closed period, the period will need to re-opened and the termination recorded.
Just like any other option in System Settings, Locking Periods is managed separately for Lessee, SBITA, and Lessor.