The Year That Was Signed in March
The auditor signed off last year in March. In October they ask how you know nothing has posted to last year since. A closed period answers most of that on its own; the rest is four exhibits you can pull in an afternoon, and knowing exactly where the trail runs thin before somebody else finds it.
The answer, before the meeting
Once a month is closed, the ledger itself refuses anything dated inside it: a journal is turned away with the month named, an edit or a removal is refused, and a document dated into it posts on the first open day instead. So the honest answer to “has anything posted to last year since sign-off?” is only if somebody reopened a month, and on the dashboard a reopening needs a written reason and lands in a tamper-evident audit log. Prove it with four exhibits: the closed periods, the audit log since sign-off, the statements re-run at year end against the signed copy, and the year-end bank reconciliation. Keep your own copy of what you signed; the system re-computes rather than remembers.
The audit committee met in March. The partner walked through the accounts, the board approved them, and the signed set went to the bank, the donors and the registry. In October a new engagement team arrives for the interim visit, and the senior opens with a question that sounds routine and is not: last year’s figures were signed seven months ago — how do you know nothing has been posted into last year since?
The finance manager knows the answer is “nothing has”. The difficulty is that knowing is not evidence. The auditor wants to see why it could not have happened, who could have made it happen anyway, and what record would show it if they had. That is three different questions, and most finance teams can answer the first and are vague on the other two.
This post is about answering all three — what the system does once a period is closed, what it writes down when someone goes round that, and how to put it on the table in a form an auditor will accept.
Four ways a signed year can move
Before pulling any evidence, be precise about what “posted to last year” can mean. There are four routes, and they leave different trails.
| How last year could move | What happens once the month is closed | What it leaves behind |
|---|---|---|
| A new entry dated inside last year | A manual journal is refused, with the closed month named. A system posting with no date of its own lands on the first open day. | Nothing in last year; a manual journal attempt never reaches the ledger |
| An edit to an entry already there | Refused if either the old date or the new one falls in a closed month | Nothing changes |
| Removing an entry | Refused in a closed month, and a posted entry cannot be removed in any month — it is reversed instead | A linked reversal, in an open month |
| Reopening a month, posting, closing it again | Allowed, for someone with the permission to manage accounts | On the dashboard: a reopen entry in the audit log with the reason, then a close entry |
The first three are closed by construction. The check sits on the ledger entry itself rather than on each screen, so invoices, payments, the till, payroll, expenses, supplier payments and manual journals all meet the same rule — the mechanism is described in The Close That Is a Lock as Well as a Note, and how a correction is made without removing anything in A Posted Journal Is Never Deleted, Only Reversed.
That leaves the fourth route as the whole of the auditor’s question. If last year moved, a month was reopened. So the evidence is really about reopenings: whether there were any, who did it, why, and what moved while the door was open.
Once the months are closed, “has anything posted to last year?” becomes a narrower question: “has anybody reopened last year?” — and that one has a log.
Reopening is the only door, and it carries a reason
Reopening a month on the dashboard is deliberately not an undo button. The form asks for a reason and will not submit without one. The month’s record then shows it as open, with the time and the name of the person who reopened it, and the reason replaces the closing note on that record.
More importantly for an auditor, the reopen is written to the audit log with the month and the reason, and so is every close. The audit log is hash-chained per workspace: each row carries a signature over its own content and the row before it, so an edited row stops matching and a removed row breaks the chain for the row after it. There is no route to delete audit rows; they leave only through the retention policy, which records its own purge. The accurate word for that is tamper-evident, and it is the word to use with an auditor — the full argument is on the audit trail integrity page.
Read the log, not the periods screen, for the sequence
The periods screen keeps one line per month showing its latest close and its latest reopening. A month closed in January, reopened in April and closed again in May shows May’s close and April’s reopen — and April’s reason in place of January’s note. The full sequence, with every reason, is in the audit log. Pull it from there.
Two facts belong in the same conversation. Reopening uses the same permission as closing, so whoever can close a month can open it again without a second person. And the reason and audit entry are written when the month is reopened from the dashboard; a close or reopen made from the mobile app updates the month’s record with the person and time, and is the route to keep in mind when the auditor asks whether the log is complete. Both are in the offer at the end.
Four exhibits for the interim visit
Here is the pack, in the order the conversation usually runs. None of it needs a developer, and all of it can be pulled before the auditor arrives.
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The twelve months, closed
Open the accounting periods screen and show every month of last year as closed, with the person and the time. A year is closed one month at a time, so check that it really is twelve: the month-end checklist flags a month whose predecessor is still open, because entries can still land in it. A signed year with an open November is the most common finding of all, and the cheapest to fix.
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The audit log since sign-off
Filter the audit log to the Accounting module, from the date the accounts were signed to today, and look for periods reopened. Export it, and run the chain verification on the same screen so the export comes with a statement that the log is intact. An empty list of reopenings is the strongest single exhibit you have. A non-empty one comes with names, dates and reasons attached.
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The statements re-run at year end
Run the balance sheet as at the last day of the year and the income statement for the year’s dates, and lay them beside the signed set. Both filter on the date each entry was posted to, so a late document that landed in this year does not move them. If a month was reopened, this is where its effect shows up — and you already know which month, from exhibit two.
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The year-end bank reconciliation
Show the completed reconciliation at the year-end statement date, with who completed it and when, and then re-run the reconciliation for the same date and statement balance. The two should agree. This is the exhibit that supports the cash figure on the balance sheet, and it is covered in more detail below.
Opening the audit log needs the permission that also opens settings administration, which is more than many organizations want to hand an external auditor. Pull and export it yourself, or read The Auditor Who Has to Be an Administrator before deciding how to give them access.
The year-end cash figure and the reconciliation behind it
Cash is the balance an auditor tests hardest, and the bank reconciliation at the year-end statement date is the document they want. A reconciliation here cannot be completed until every statement line on or before that date has been matched, entered or ignored, and until the books and the statement agree to the cent. It cannot be completed for a date at or before one already reconciled.
Completing it stores the statement date, the statement balance, the book balance on that date, the totals of receipts and payments not yet on the statement, and who completed it and when. Every statement line it cleared is locked to that reconciliation and can no longer be unmatched or re-entered. The completion is written to the audit log. There is no action anywhere in the product that reverses a completed reconciliation.
A year-end reconciliation, as completed
Re-running the reconciliation today for the same date and statement balance should return the same book balance. If it does not, an entry has been dated on or before the year-end since the reconciliation was completed — and exhibit two tells you when the month was open to let it in.
The outstanding items themselves are recomputed each time rather than stored as a list; the reconciliation keeps their totals. For the year-end file, save the reconciliation screen with its outstanding entries on the day you complete it and keep it with the statement. For how the reconciliation works line by line, Bank Reconciliation, Explained and the bank reconciliation page cover it.
Late documents: dated last year, posted this year
One kind of movement is not a defect at all, and an auditor will ask about it anyway. A supplier invoice for December arrives in February. A customer invoice is raised in April with a December date because that is when the work was done. The documents are legitimate, and dated correctly.
Here, the document keeps its own date and its ledger entry lands on the first open day, because the month it belongs to is closed. The till keeps trading, the invoice still goes out, and last year’s figures stay as signed. What the auditor wants from these is a list — they are exactly the subsequent-events and cut-off items an engagement looks for — and how you settle them is a policy decision: accept them in the current year, or reopen the month and say why.
Pulling that list takes two screens today. The journal register filters by when an entry was entered, so entries entered since the year-end are easy to find; the document lists carry each document’s own date. Matching one against the other is a spreadsheet job for now, and a report that pairs them is the first thing in the offer below.
The trial balance you signed, and the one you can run today
The last question is the one people expect the software to answer for them: show me the trial balance as it was when we signed it. The system re-computes every statement from the ledger each time it is run. It does not keep a copy of a report as issued. That is by design rather than an oversight — a stored copy would be a second source of truth — but it does mean the signed version is yours to keep.
With the months closed, re-computing is safe: the balance sheet as at year-end and the income statement for the year return what you signed unless a month was reopened. The trial balance can be run as at a date from the mobile app and through the developer interface; the trial balance screen on the dashboard shows today’s totals. Keep the signed PDF of all three in the year-end file, with the date and time it was run, which is the practice The Report That Changes When You Run It Again argues for.
Before the auditor’s letter arrives
- Every month of the signed year shows as closed on the periods screen, with no gaps.
- An audit log export, Accounting module, from the sign-off date to today, with the chain verification run the same day.
- For each reopening in that export: the reason, what was posted while it was open, and who approved the change.
- Balance sheet as at year-end and income statement for the year, re-run and set beside the signed copies.
- The completed year-end reconciliation for each bank account, a re-run for the same date, and the outstanding entries saved at completion.
- A list of documents dated last year whose ledger entries landed this year, and the policy decision you made about each.
- The signed PDFs of the trial balance and statements, stored with the date and time they were run.
Five questions to ask of any finance system before sign-off
Once a month is closed, what happens to an entry dated inside it?
What you will probably hear
“Closed periods are locked.”
How to read it
Ask whether the lock sits on the ledger entry or on each screen. A lock on the screens is a lock that the next integration, import or mobile app forgets.
Who can reopen a closed month, and must they say why?
What you will probably hear
A role name.
How to read it
Ask whether a reason is required on every route that can reopen — web, app and integrations alike — and whether a second person is involved.
Where is a reopening recorded, and can that record be edited?
What you will probably hear
“It’s in the audit log.”
How to read it
Ask whether the log can be verified as unaltered, and whether anyone inside your organization can delete rows from it.
Can I see last year’s trial balance as it was the day we signed it?
What you will probably hear
“You can re-run it for those dates.”
How to read it
Re-running is reliable only if the periods are locked. Ask whether the system stores the figures as issued, and if not, keep your own signed copy.
Can a completed bank reconciliation be undone?
What you will probably hear
“Only by an administrator.”
How to read it
An undo that exists is an undo somebody will use. Ask what it leaves behind if it is used, and whether the cleared lines stay locked.
Turning four exhibits into one report
The lock, the logged reopen and the locked reconciliation are built and in use. These would put the whole answer to the auditor’s question on a single screen.
A late-entry report
Every entry entered after a chosen sign-off date, beside the date of its own document and the date its ledger entry took — the subsequent-events list in one export.
A held reopen
Reopening a signed month held for a second person, with its own permission, and the same reason and audit entry from the mobile app as from the dashboard.
Statements as issued
A stored copy of the trial balance and statements at the moment you mark them as signed, and a comparison against a re-run that names any account that has moved.
A reconciliation drift check
Each completed reconciliation re-computed against today’s books for its own statement date, flagged the moment the book balance stops agreeing.
Each is a contained build on records the workspace already keeps.
Talk to us about your year-end fileWhat AWRA OpsHub does today
- A lock on the ledger entry itself. Once a month is closed, a manual journal dated inside it is refused with the month named, and edits or removals touching it are refused, whichever screen or integration made them.
- Late documents keep their date. An invoice, expense or supplier payment dated into a closed month still saves; its ledger entry lands on the first open day, so the signed figures stay as signed.
- A reasoned reopen on the dashboard. Reopening requires a written reason and writes the month and the reason to the audit log; every close is logged too.
- A tamper-evident audit log. Hash-chained per workspace, verifiable from the audit log screen, exportable, and with no route to delete rows.
- A locked bank reconciliation. Completion stores the statement and book balances, the outstanding totals, the person and the time, locks every cleared line and is logged; the product has no action that reverses it.
- Statements re-run for any dates. The balance sheet as at a date and the income statement between dates, on the ledger date each entry was posted to.
More we can add to your workspace
- A late-entry report pairing each document’s own date with the date its ledger entry took.
- A separate permission to reopen a signed month, with a second person to approve it.
- The same required reason and audit entry for a close or reopen made from the mobile app as from the dashboard.
- A stored copy of each statement as issued, compared against a re-run account by account.
- A drift check on completed bank reconciliations, re-computing the book balance at each statement date.
- A dated trial balance on the dashboard, matching the one in the mobile app.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not sign or certify your accounts. The audit opinion is your auditor’s to give, and the decision that a year is final is your board’s.
- We do not choose your policy on late documents. Whether a December invoice found in April is accepted this year or reopens last year is a judgement your organization makes and records.
Any of the middle column can be built into your workspace as a defined piece of work, priced before it starts.
Every statement above was checked against the product on 26 October 2026.
See the accounting controls
Period locks, approved journals, reversals instead of removals, and a reconciliation that stays reconciled.
Explore accounting controlsFrequently asked questions
If a month is closed, can anything still be posted into it?
Not while it stays closed. A manual journal dated inside it is refused with the month named, edits and removals touching it are refused, and a document dated inside it posts its ledger entry on the first open day instead. The only way to put an entry into a closed month is to reopen it first.
Is reopening a closed month recorded?
Reopening from the dashboard requires a written reason and writes the month and the reason to the audit log, alongside every close. The periods screen shows the latest close and the latest reopening for each month, so read the full sequence from the audit log.
Can the audit log be altered after the fact?
It is tamper-evident rather than tamper-proof. Each row is signed together with the row before it, so an edited or removed row breaks the chain, and the audit log screen can verify the chain and export it. There is no route in the product for deleting audit rows.
Can I see last year’s trial balance exactly as we signed it?
Statements are re-computed from the ledger each time they are run rather than stored as issued. With every month of the year closed and no reopenings, a re-run for the same dates returns the figures you signed. Keep the signed PDF in your year-end file in any case.
What happens to an invoice dated last year that is raised this year?
The invoice keeps its own date and goes out as normal, and its ledger entry lands on the first open day, so last year’s figures do not move. Whether to accept it in the current year or reopen last year is a policy decision for your organization.
Can a completed bank reconciliation be reopened?
No. Completing a reconciliation locks every statement line it cleared, stores the balances and outstanding totals with who completed it and when, and writes it to the audit log. The product has no action that reverses it.
