The close lock and reopening

What the lock is

The close lock is Haruno's record that a month has been reported. When a close finishes, the months it reported figures for are locked, except a month that was exported or synced before it ended or has no balance sheet: see When months lock. From then on, no figure the month's statements presented can change unless someone reopens the month with a written reason, and that reason stays with the month for good. The lock is kept per company and per month, in the company's books on your Mac.

The lock is Haruno's, not QuickBooks'. It does not stop anyone posting in QuickBooks, and the close never writes to QuickBooks. Nor is it a verdict on the books: a month locks whether or not it tied, and the lock records whether it was fully reconciled, reported with exception or not reconciled. Haruno for Windows has the same lock. This page describes the Mac; where Windows differs, see Haruno on Windows.

When months lock

• At the “Locking the month” step of every close, after the Statements, Reconciliation (when the company has one) and Investor report steps, and before the Adjustments log step. A report that cannot be built stops the close short of the lock, so a month is never locked when its statement package or investor report cannot be made.
• Every month that carries at least one balance-sheet or profit-and-loss figure and is not already locked. A first close of exports covering seven months locks seven months. Two kinds of month are reported but left open: one with a profit and loss and no balance sheet, which none of the checks can look at, and one whose statements were run on or before its last day, by the date QuickBooks prints on the export or the time of the Sync, because QuickBooks can still change its figures. The close result says which months it left open and what to export, and they lock at the first close after that export or Sync arrives.
• Whether or not the month tied. Findings never stop the lock.
• Not months that exist only because a budget names them.

There is no month picker: the exports you add, or the months a Sync brings in, decide which months a close reports.

What each close outcome does to the lock

What each result means for the reports is in The result, and the Cancel messages in Canceling a close.

Close states

Every locked month records whether any high- or medium-severity integrity finding was still open when it locked, and whether the books held a reconciliation for that month. That record is the month's close state, always one of these five terms:

Low findings, questions and solvency or going-concern indicators never count: a company short of cash does not make its bookkeeping unreconciled. The names after “unresolved:”, such as recon_exceptions, are the checks' own names. A finding row on the Findings & questions tab shows a title instead; the table in The checks matches each title to its name. For severities, see Severities.

A company's header shows one chip for all its locked months, so the weakest state wins: reported with exception in any month outranks not recorded, which outranks not reconciled, which outranks fully reconciled. The summary beside it does not say how many months carry the exception; the Months sheet does.

See Companies without a workbook and How reconciliation sets the close state.

The state is a snapshot

The close state is what was known at the lock, and it is not recalculated. Findings carry no month, so one close records the same list on every month it locks: twelve months locked with one unmapped account open are all reported with exception, and fixing the cause later does not change that. Re-run checks on the Findings & questions tab reads the ledger as it stands now; the chip shows what was said when the months were reported. Both are right. A month's recorded state changes only when it is reopened and closed again.

Where the close state appears

The package's wording is in The notes before the statements.

What trips the lock

A close is refused for a company when posting its exports would change anything a locked month presented. Just before the figures are saved, the lock compares every locked month before and after. If anything moved, nothing from that company's exports is posted: no figure is written and nothing is locked. Other companies in the same close carry on.

What the lock compares

• Every account's balance-sheet balance and profit-and-loss amount in each locked month.
• Every statement line as it was presented. A mapping change that moves a line counts even when no stored figure changes.
• Every line of an imported statement of cash flows whose span reaches a locked month.

A figure has changed when it differs by more than half a cent, and a missing figure counts as zero. Materiality plays no part: a one-dollar reclassification is refused like a large one. Nothing else is compared: reconciliation schedules, budgets, operating inputs, agings, and billing or CRM exports that feed no statement figure are outside the lock, so a change in one never needs a reopen.

Changes that trip it, and changes that do not

Decide before the first draft whether the exports carry QuickBooks account numbers: turning them on or off later renames every account, which can meet the lock like a renamed account without a number. See Account numbers, Changing the mapping and Adding files later. After a close, the reporting currency cannot change; the fiscal year-end can, from the next close, and closed months keep their reports (Company details).

A worked example: a new account after a close

A new loan account appears in QuickBooks in July, and July is closed. The approved mapping puts it on no statement line, so the checks raise the high-severity unmapped_active_account finding, and July locks as reported with exception. You can map that one account without drafting again: press Resolve… on the finding in Findings & questions (press Re-run checks first if it has none) and choose the statement line it belongs on. That changes what July presented, and what any other locked month presented where the account carries a balance, so the next close is refused until you reopen those months with a reason such as “New loan account mapped to long-term debt”. Then close again. See A new account appears in QuickBooks.

How a refused close looks

A company the lock stopped reads Did not close, with a red sentence such as “March 2026 is locked, and this close would change 1 figure reported for it. Nothing was written. Reopen the month to correct it, or record the difference in April 2026, then close again.” Under it are the first five figures that would have moved, such as “March 2026 · 4010 Subscription License: $4,525.75 → $4,600”, and “and N more”, then the months and a Correct… link, which turns the close sheet into a choice (see Correct a reported month). If you reopen, the Reopen sheet opens with those months already ticked (see Where to reopen from); reopen them with a reason and close again. The Restatements sheet then lists every figure that moved, and the company's row says “This close changed N figures already reported: …”, naming the first five. A failure with no months is another refusal: see When the close refuses.

Locked months in the pre-flight

Once a company has locked months, its pre-flight row still reads Will close, with a gray note under it: “41 months are locked, through June 2026. If a figure in one of them would change, this company won’t close until that month is reopened.” (For one month: “June 2026 is locked. If a figure in it would change, this company won’t close until the month is reopened.”) The note stops nothing: the pre-flight posts nothing, so it cannot tell which months your new exports change, and the row has no Reopen… link.

• Will close: click Close month. Locked months the new files leave unchanged stay locked, and nothing is recorded against them.
• If a new export would change a figure in a locked month, the close is refused for that company: its result row names the months and the figures and offers Correct…: record the difference in a later month, or reopen those months with a reason, then close again.
• Will not close: the company is not ready, for example its mapping reads no Balance Sheet or no Profit and Loss, or one of its files cannot be read. The row says which and, on the Portfolio's sheet, has an Open company link. It does not hold back the others: Close month closes the companies marked Will close, by name, and stays off only when none is ready.

A month reopened and closed again with unchanged figures is not a restatement, but its reopening stays in its History and it locks again with the findings open at that close. See Closing the next month.

The close-state chip and the Months sheet

Click the close-state chip in a company's header to open the Months sheet: every month the company's books hold, newest first, with what the lock recorded and who reopened a month and why. The header's lock summary is described in Header and close state.

Times in the Months and Restatements sheets are in UTC, shown without a time zone. The History names the user account that pressed the button, not your Haruno sign-in, and is not a sign-off. Months that exist only because a budget names them never lock: the sheet shows them as open, but the header's “still open” count leaves them out. A month a close reported but left open, because it was exported or synced before it ended or has no balance sheet, shows as open too, and the count includes it.

Reopen…, shown only while a month is locked, opens the Reopen sheet, and Restatements… opens the Restatements sheet. Books ▸ Reopen Month… goes straight to the Reopen sheet for the company on screen, once it has closed at least once.

Reopening a month

Reopening puts locked months back to open so that a corrected figure can be posted. Your reason, who reopened the month and when are kept with it permanently, and printed in the statement package if its figures then move. Reopening changes no figure by itself: the next close posts the exports, compares, and locks the months again.

Where to reopen from

Reopen from the company page: its close-state chip ▸ Months sheet ▸ Reopen…, or Books ▸ Reopen Month… (which also works on a company's setup page). The Correct… link beside a company's row in a close sheet, on the Portfolio too, opens a choice; its Reopen… option closes the close sheet and opens the Reopen sheet for that company with the months it names already ticked and your note as the reason. Close month… in the Reopen sheet brings the close sheet back. Haruno for Windows has no Books menu; there, Reopen Month… is in the company's header.

Reopen a month

1. Open the company's page, click the close-state chip, then Reopen… in the Months sheet.

   Or choose Books ▸ Reopen Month…. The sheet is titled Reopen a reported month.

2. Under Months, tick each month to reopen.

   Only locked months are listed; with none, the sheet reads “No month of this company is closed, so there is nothing to reopen.” When you come from a refused close, the months it named are already ticked and the Reason holds the note you wrote on the Correct… sheet. All the months you tick reopen together, or none do. That matters for a statement of cash flows covering a quarter in one column: reopening part of its span would leave the rest locked against the same correction.

3. Under Reason, write why the reported figures are being changed.

   See What the reason must be.

4. Click Reopen.

   The sheet confirms the months are open again, with who reopened each, when, and the reason.

5. Click Close month… to close now, or Done to close later.

   Close month… opens the close sheet for this company, starting with the pre-flight.

What the reason must be

The reason is the permanent answer to “why did a reported figure change?”. Haruno refuses a blank or all-space reason (the Reopen button stays disabled), a placeholder from the list below in any case, and anything wrapped in angle brackets, such as <why this month changed>, which marks an example somebody was meant to replace. Anything else is kept as typed, less leading and trailing spaces; Haruno does not judge whether it says enough.

The placeholders refused are ..., …, .., ., ?, -, --, n/a, na, tbd, todo, reason, <reason>, why and x. The refusal appears in red under the field and begins “re-opening 2026-06-30 needs a reason, in the words of whoever decided to change a reported month — 'tbd' is not one.”

Write what changed, why, and on whose decision, because a reader of the package sees it next to the restated figure. For example:

• Loan payable presented with accounts payable per CFO
• May customer credit memo posted after the May package was issued; corrected in QuickBooks per controller review

What a reopening keeps

• A record in the month's History: when, the user account, and your reason.
• The figures the month presented at that moment, so the next close can say exactly what moved.
• Everything before it. The earlier close stays in the History; nothing is overwritten.

A reopening cannot be withdrawn, and a reason cannot be edited or deleted in the app. A reopened month stays open until the next close that completes. There is no approval step: anyone using Haruno on the Mac can reopen a month, so agree in your practice who may reopen a reported month.

Correct a reported month, start to finish

Haruno has no cell to edit and no adjustment to post. The correction is booked in QuickBooks, and the corrected export (or the next Sync) carries it into Haruno. Then you choose how it is reported: reopen the month and restate it, as below, or keep it as reported and record the difference in a later month.

1. Book the correction in QuickBooks Online.

   A correction dated in an earlier month usually moves every later month-end balance sheet too.

2. Export the corrected statements for the months it changes, and add them to the company.

   See What to export each month and Adding files later. A re-export with the same file name is kept beside the earlier one as “… 2.xlsx”, and every close reads both, the copy after the original, so the corrected figures are the ones that count (same-named files).

3. Reopen the months the correction changes, with a reason.

   Follow Reopen a month. If the lock already stopped a close, its result row named the months and offers Correct…, whose Reopen… option opens the Reopen sheet with them ticked.

4. Close the month.

   Click Close month… in the Reopen sheet, read the pre-flight, then click Close month. A company past its first close still reads Will close, with a note about its locked months: see Locked months in the pre-flight.

5. Check what moved.

   Click the close-state chip, then Restatements…: every figure the correction changed should be listed, Before and After. If one is not, the corrected figures did not reach that month; if a close finished without refusing while the month was still locked, they were not the ones posted. Either way, don't send the package; see The lock in Troubleshooting.

6. Export the new statement package before you send it.

   See Export a report as a PDF and a web page and Keep what you sent.

Or record the difference in a later month

For a small correction, add the corrected export and close the company without reopening anything. The lock refuses the close, and the company's row offers Correct…. It turns the close sheet into one choice, “‹Company›: a reported month changed”, with the size of the change for each month, such as “February 2026: net income $41,000 → $44,500 (+$3,500, 0.8% of revenue)”, and whether it is within the company's materiality.

• “Keep February 2026 as reported and record the difference in March 2026”: March's profit and loss includes the correction, in the same accounts, with your note. Nothing reported changes.
• “Reopen February 2026 and restate it”: the statement package shows what was reported and what changed, with your note as the reason.

The first is marked Recommended when every figure that moved and the change in net income are within the company's materiality. Write a Note on the correction (a placeholder such as tbd is refused); it is printed in the statement package beside the figures. Record in March 2026 closes that company at once; Reopen… opens the Reopen sheet with the months ticked and your note as the reason.

The difference is added to the same account in the first later month that is not yet reported and has a profit and loss, which must be in the same fiscal year; a balance-sheet difference carries nothing, because a later month's balance sheet comes from its own export. The close result reads “February 2026 stays as reported, and its correction is recorded in March 2026: 1 figure, net income +89.50.”

Where recording is not possible, the sheet says why and offers only Reopen…: there is no later month with a profit and loss yet (add the next month's exports), the next one is in another fiscal year, a statement of cash flows that was already reported changed, or the change is in how a month is presented rather than in a figure, as after a mapping change.

Reopening the month a correction belongs to takes the correction back, and is refused while the month it was recorded in is reported: reopen that month with it, or the correction would be counted twice. A recorded correction is also taken back, with a note in the close result, when a later export puts the figure back to what was reported while the month it was recorded in is still open. See Restatements for how a recorded correction is listed.

Restatements

A restatement is a figure in a reported month that changed after the month was reopened. Haruno judges it by the figures, by the same rules as the lock: what the month presented when reopened against what it presents when closed again. A month reopened and closed again with the same figures is not a restatement and appears in no package and no log. A correction recorded in a later month is not one either: it is listed apart, as an out-of-period adjustment. Moving a company's books from Excel exports to QuickBooks (see Move a company from Excel files to QuickBooks) reopens every reported month itself, with the reason “Now read from QuickBooks. This company’s books moved from Excel exports to QuickBooks Online.”, and the close restates them.

Where a restatement appears

See The statement package and The investor report.

The Restatements sheet

Open it from the Months sheet with Restatements…. It is a view of the adjustments log, newest month first, with amounts to two decimals and negatives in parentheses; its columns are listed in The adjustments log. Click a column heading to sort; sorting on Change puts the largest decrease at one end and the largest increase at the other. For a month still open, the rows compare the figures kept at the reopening with the books now, so they can change until it is closed. With nothing restated, the sheet reads “No figure has been restated for this company.” A correction recorded in a later month is a row of kind out of period (Month is the month it belongs to, Change the amount recorded in the later month, Reason your note) and is counted apart in the heading line, for example “Nothing restated · 1 recorded in a later month”.

What each kind means

The adjustments log

The adjustments log, adjustments.csv, is the schedule of restatements a practice would otherwise keep by hand: every figure that moved in a month after it was reported, from what to what, and the reopening that allowed it, or the later month a correction was recorded in. Every close that gets that far rewrites it after the lock with the company's whole history. It is not an adjustment layer: nothing in it is posted anywhere.

Open it from the Adjustments log row of the company's Reports card, or with Open adjustments.csv in the Restatements sheet. It opens in your Mac's app for CSV files (on Windows, in the app's preview panel) and cannot be saved as PDF; to pass it on, use Save a Copy… in the row's … menu. See The adjustments log in The reports.

Log amounts are plain numbers with two decimals, in whole currency units. A log with only its header row means nothing has been restated. A reopening that moved several figures writes one row per figure. A not itemized row is the whole answer, not a gap to fill by guessing. A correction recorded in a later month is a row of kind out of period: period is the month it belongs to, subject names the account and the later month, and reopened_at is blank.

Why the lock matters

Once a month's figures go to a board, investors or a lender, people rely on them. The lock makes sure a later export cannot quietly replace them: a correction happens on the record, where someone decides, writes down why, and every package from then on says what moved.

• Comparability. A figure that changed silently turns a correction into what looks like a trading result.
• Disclosure. A correction to a reported period should be identified, explained and quantified; Restated periods, Out-of-period adjustments and the adjustments log do that from the ledger.
• Evidence. When a reviewer, an auditor or an acquirer asks what changed after a month was reported, and why, the adjustments log answers.
• Honesty about exceptions. A month reported with exception is still reported and locked, and the package says so.

What the lock does not decide

• Whether a correction is material. The lock stops any change over half a cent; Correct… compares the change with the company's materiality only to suggest an answer, and whether investors need to hear about it is your judgment.
• How to disclose it. What you tell investors is yours to write.
• Whether the books are right. Haruno is not an audit and gives no opinion on the figures.

Keep what you sent

The lock keeps each month's figures and every change since, but not the document you sent: a report is drawn from the books each time you open it, so export each package when you send it (When reports change). The lock history lives in the company's books on your Mac (Where the books are stored); Delete local data… in Settings removes it with the rest of your books (Delete local data).

Haruno's assistant and the lock

The assistant can explain a close state or a check named after “unresolved:”. It cannot close, lock, reopen or restate anything, and it is instructed never to claim that a month was closed, locked, reopened or restated. Only the app does those things, with the controls on this page. See What Haruno will not do.

Common questions