Reading the period close report
What the period close readiness score means, the blockers that hold a month open, and what closing and locking a reporting period actually does.
Updated 18 July 2026
The Period Close report is the pre-flight check finance runs before booking a month: it scores how close-ready a reporting period is, lists what still needs attention, and, once the list is clear, closes and locks the month so the numbers booked stay the numbers on record. This page explains what each number means. For the end-to-end workflow it sits inside, see R&D capitalisation end to end.
The readiness score
The score is a weighted checklist. Each control that is in a close-ready state adds its weight; the total is the readiness percentage, capped at 100. A period is ready to close at 95 or above with no open blockers — the last few points come from locking itself, so a fully-clean-but-open month sits just below the line until you close it.
If the period has no ledger data at all — no cost and no hours — the score is 0 regardless of everything else. There is nothing to close.
| Control | Weight | Close-ready when |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger has effort data | 20 | The period has captured cost or hours |
| Classification confidence is clean | 20 | No low-confidence (grey-zone) classified entries remain |
| Classification review queues are clear | 15 | No tickets or commits are waiting for review |
| Evidence gaps are reconciled | 15 | No commit-without-worklog or worklog-without-commit gaps |
| Engineer rates cover active people | 15 | Every active person carries a rate covering the period |
| Integrations are synced recently | 10 | Every active integration synced successfully within the last 24 hours |
| Reporting period is locked | 5 | Every month in the range is locked |
Blockers hold the month open
Anything not in a close-ready state becomes a blocker on the risk queue, ranked by severity and then by the money exposed. Severity follows the weight: the 20- and 15-point controls raise high blockers, sync freshness a medium one, and an unlocked period a low one. Each blocker links to the report that resolves it, so the queue doubles as a work list.
Two are worth calling out because they gate real money:
- Classification confidence names the low-confidence cost — money classified by a fallback rather than a rule or a person. It is the grey zone the confidence view exists to drive down.
- Evidence gaps counts the commit/worklog mismatches an auditor could ask about: logged time with no code behind it, or code with no logged time.
You cannot close while any blocker other than "period locked" is open — closing is the step that clears that last one.
Closing and locking
Two actions sit on the report:
- Save snapshot takes an immutable record of what the period looks like right now, without locking anything. Use it to capture the numbers finance reviewed at a point in time.
- Close period locks every month in the range and writes a close snapshot. You confirm the months first; if the range includes a partial month, the whole reporting month is still locked.
Locking a month freezes its work. Commits and tickets with effort in a locked period can no longer be reclassified, so a booked capitalisable/expensed split stays put. Period boundaries are evaluated in your organisation's timezone, so a commit near midnight lands in the month you'd expect.
Exports and the audit bundle
Three exports sit behind the report, all disabled until the period has data:
| Export | What it is |
|---|---|
| Excel | The period-close workbook: summary, checklist, risk queue, period locks, sync status and metadata |
| The period-close board pack for a review meeting | |
| Audit bundle | A single archive of everything an auditor would ask for |
The audit bundle is a .zip containing the board-pack PDF and workbook, the
ledger export, the confidence report, both evidence-gap listings (commits and
worklogs), the lock history, and a manifest that records a SHA-256 checksum for
every file in the bundle. Hand it over as-is — the checksums let the recipient
confirm nothing was altered after export.