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You can set a “Close Books” date so that once you’re done with a period in your accounting system, no invoices from that period can sneak back in. This keeps Garde and QuickBooks in sync and prevents your past reports from changing.

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How to set it up

When you’re ready to close a period, go to Accounting > Close Books. Enter the Accounting Period Closed Date — this is the last date of the period you’re closing. Save it. From that point on, any invoice uploaded with a date on or before your closed date gets automatically bumped to the next day. Example: You close January by entering 1/31/2022. A week later, an invoice dated January 15th gets uploaded. Garde changes its date to 2/1 so it lands in February instead. The expense shows up in February’s reporting and exports to your accounting system with the new date. You can tell when this happened — the invoice date appears in red (instead of black), though the Upload Date still shows the actual day it was uploaded.

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How frequently should I close?

Depends on how you report your numbers. We wrote a separate guide to help you decide: Closing the Books — how frequently? And checklists to keep you on track:

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What if I’m getting errors?

If Garde won’t let you set a Close Books date, it’s because there are invoices dated on or before your chosen date that haven’t been exported yet. You can’t close a period while there’s still unfinished business in it. To fix this:
  1. Invoices in approval? Approve them first so they’re ready for export.
  2. Invoices waiting to export? Export them from Garde, then try setting the date again.
  3. Want to exclude an invoice from this period? You can change the invoice date to move it to the next period.
If you’re using Invoice Approval and an invoice has already had its posting date adjusted by Close Books, you can still edit the invoice date — but not the posting date.