Edit or Delete Accounting Periods – Help Center

Once your accounting periods have been created, you can shift their start and/or end dates, or simply delete them.

If you haven't created an accounting period yet, we recommend reading this article first: Creating accounting periods

This article covers the following topics:

Editing an accounting period
Deleting an accounting period
Real-world examples of editing or deleting accounting periods

Editing an accounting period

How to edit an accounting period

There are various reasons you may need to change the dates of an accounting period. Go to Settings > Accounting > Accounting Periods, then click the pencil icon Edit accounting period. In the side panel, update the start/end date of your period, then click Save.

Changing these dates simply shifts the accounting periods in time. Any affected entries will be reassigned to a different accounting period.

Example: Your accounting period runs from January 1 to December 31. You have a book entry dated May 5. If you set a new period start date of June 1, the May 5 entry will no longer belong to this period — it will be reassigned to the previous one.

Things to keep in mind before editing accounting periods

There are a few important points to keep in mind when modifying your accounting periods:

Continuity between periods

To change the start or end date of a period, there must be continuity between accounting periods.

The accounting period configuration page enforces the following rules:

there can be no gap between periods;
two periods cannot overlap.

As a result, when you change the start or end date of a period, the dates of adjacent periods are automatically adjusted to maintain continuity.

We walk through some real-world examples of editing accounting periods later in this article.

Closed periods cannot be edited

If you have closed an accounting period and need to change its dates after the fact, you must first reopen that period.

Please refer to this article on reversing a closing.

Every entry must belong to an accounting period

Even if an entry is not tied to a specific period and can be reassigned after a change, it must still belong to some accounting period.

It is therefore not possible to change a period's start or end date if doing so would push entries outside all the accounting periods set up in the platform.

Deleting an accounting period

You can delete an accounting period, but the steps involved will vary depending on your situation.

Deleting periods and their associated entries

If you want to start fresh because the entries you entered were just test entries, you can reset your accounting to erase all accounting data and settings.

To do this, go to Settings > Accounting → Delete entries and reset accounting (at the bottom of the page).

On this page, choose to reset your accounting — this will also delete your accounting periods.

Deleting an accounting period created by mistake

If you accidentally created an accounting period and want to remove it, go to Settings > Accounting > Accounting Periods, click the trash icon Delete accounting period next to the period you want to remove, and confirm in the dialog that appears.

To preserve continuity between accounting periods, only the most recent open period can be deleted. For example, if you have a 2025 period and a 2026 period open and want to delete 2025, you must first delete 2026.

If the trash icon is grayed out (even for the most recent period), there are likely entries in the period you're trying to delete. These may be manually entered entries or automatic ones, such as depreciation entries, which are added as soon as a period is created and will prevent deletion. You can either delete the entries or extend the next period to cover the entry dates. If you choose to edit the entry dates, refer to this article on editing/deleting entries.

Real-world examples of editing or deleting accounting periods

Shifting the start date of a period that follows another

You have two accounting periods:

one from 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2024;
another from 01/01/2025 to 12/31/2025.

If the new start date for the 2025 period is 02/01/2025, then the end date of the 2024 period will need to be 01/31/2025.

When you change the start date of the 2025 period, a warning message will appear to notify you of the date shift. Once you confirm the change, 2 dates are affected:

Other periods before or after these two (for example, 01/01/2023 to 12/31/2023 and 01/01/2026 to 12/31/2026) will not be affected by this change. So if you want all your accounting periods to start on February 1 instead of January 1, you will need to make that adjustment for each year individually.

Adding an earlier period by shifting all periods back in time

You have four accounting periods, each running from 01/01 to 12/31 of a given year, and the first period has not yet been closed — so you can still shift the dates of these periods.

You want to add a period prior to these, covering 01/01/2021 to 12/31/2021. If you click Add accounting period, the start date is locked to 01/01/2026, since the platform assumes the new period follows directly after the last one created.

To create an earlier period, you need to shift the dates of each existing period, starting with the oldest one.

Edit the oldest period (01/01/2022 to 12/31/2022) and set it to the previous year's dates: 01/01/2021 to 12/31/2021. Click Save.

The start date of the next period is automatically shifted to 01/01/2022. However, its end date remains unchanged, so that period will now span two years.

You then simply update the end date of each period, working forward in time (2022 period, then 2023, then 2024, and so on).

You end up with four periods spanning 2021 to 2024 (instead of 2022 to 2025 as before), and you can now add entries assigned to the 2021 period.

Deleting the first period by shifting all periods forward in time

You have four accounting periods running from 01/01/2021 to 12/31/2024, and you want to delete the first one (2021). Keep in mind that only the most recent accounting period can be deleted, and only if no entries are assigned to it.

Simply apply the reverse logic from the previous example: edit the dates of the most recent period and work your way back toward the oldest. Start by shifting the end date (1), then update the start date (2), and click Save.

As before, the preceding period is automatically shifted and will then span two years.

Shift the start dates of each of the preceding periods. You will end up with four periods spanning 2022 to 2025, and the 2021 period will no longer exist.

If earlier periods have already been closed, you will not be able to change the start date of the oldest open period — doing so could create gaps or overlaps between periods, which is not allowed.

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