Who can do what in the close
Reading a month's close costs nothing beyond access to Accounting. Changing one — starting it, ticking items off, closing, reopening — is split across two permissions, with a third reserved for the single case where a blocking check can be waved through. This page lists which permission each action needs, and what you see on the Close tab when you do not hold it.
The short version
| What you want to do | Permission you need |
|---|---|
| Open the Close tab, switch months, read the checklist | accounting.index |
| Open any of the nine reports, run Verify, read the sync breakdown | accounting.index |
| Start close on a month | accounting.sync |
| Re-check (re-run the automated checks) | accounting.sync |
| Tick and untick manual checklist items | accounting.sync |
| Capture provider balances | accounting.sync |
| Export pack (download the workbook) | accounting.sync |
| Close period | accounting.manage_settings |
| Reopen… a closed month | accounting.manage_settings |
| Close a month over the Inventory debt settled block | accounting.manage_settings and accounting.period.override |
Permissions are granted per role: go to Settings → Users & Permissions, open the Roles tab, open a role, and look under Accounting in its permission list. A person picks up a permission from any role they hold.
The four permissions
accounting.index — see the Accounting section
This is the coarse access gate for everything under Accounting, the Close tab included. Without it the Accounting item does not appear in the navigation menu, and going to the address directly lands you on the dashboard instead.
With it and nothing else, the whole close is readable. That is deliberate: the close is a reporting surface as much as a working one, and a reviewer, an owner or an outside accountant can be given the full picture without being handed the ability to change a month.
accounting.sync — run close actions
Everything that moves a month along without locking it:
- Start close, which turns a preview checklist into the month's saved one.
- Re-check, which re-runs every automated check against the books as they stand right now.
- The tick boxes on manual checklist items, in both directions.
- Capture provider balances, which pulls your accounting provider's trial balance in for the Trial Balance Reconciliation report.
- Export pack, which builds the whole report pack as one workbook and puts the download in the job tray.
This is the same permission that covers sync overrides, bulk actions and rebuilds elsewhere in Accounting, so a bookkeeper who already works the ledger day to day almost certainly has it. Its help text in the role editor reads Trigger accounting syncs, sync overrides, bulk actions and rebuilds.
Note where Export pack sits. Taking the workbook away needs accounting.sync
even on a month that is already closed, while opening the same nine reports on
screen needs nothing beyond accounting.index. A read-only reviewer can read every
figure; they cannot take the file away.
accounting.manage_settings — close and reopen
The two irreversible-feeling actions, and only those two:
- Close period, which locks the month and snapshots the report pack as the month's numbers of record.
- Reopen…, which removes that lock again.
Its help text in the role editor reads Configure the posting-granularity matrix and other GL settings. — closing and reopening are grouped with the settings that decide how the books are built, rather than with day-to-day sync work. In practice that means a bookkeeper can prepare a month end to end and still need a controller to sign it off, which is usually the separation you want. Grant both permissions to one role if you would rather one person did the whole thing.
accounting.period.override — close over outstanding inventory debt
A blocking check normally has to be fixed. One is different: Inventory debt
settled covers stock that shipped before its cost was known, so the month is
provisional rather than wrong. A holder of accounting.period.override can close
over that one check by typing a reason, which is recorded against the month
alongside the exposure as it stood.
It is not a general bypass. Only a check that offers the option can be closed
over, so All entries balanced and Ledger generation — individual entries
can never be closed over, at any permission level. It is also not a substitute for
accounting.manage_settings: the override only matters once you can reach the
Close period dialog in the first place. See
close a month over outstanding inventory debt.
Administrators
An administrator passes every permission check, so an administrator implicitly holds all four — including the override — without any of them being ticked on their role. If you are testing what a restricted user sees, test with a non-administrator account; an administrator will never see the disabled buttons described below.
What you see without the permission
The Close tab does not hide anything based on your permissions. Every month, every checklist row, every report and the sync breakdown render the same for everyone who can reach the page. What changes is which buttons are live.
Buttons that grey out
Without accounting.sync, three buttons grey out: Start close, Re-check
and Export pack. Only one of them explains itself. Hover Start close and
the tooltip reads You do not have permission to run close actions. Hover
Re-check or Export pack and nothing appears at all — while either of those
is disabled it shows no tooltip, for this reason or for any other reason it can be
disabled. If Re-check or Export pack is grey and nothing says why, check
your role first.
Without accounting.manage_settings, Close period is greyed out, and this one
does say why: You do not have permission to close or reopen a period.
On the two buttons that do speak — Start close and Close period — the permission reason wins over every other reason the button might be disabled. So Close period names the permission even on a month that also has blocking failures outstanding, and Start close names it even on a month whose turn to close has not come round yet. Fix the permission first; the other reasons surface once you hold it.
Buttons that stay live and fail when you use them
Three actions never grey out over a missing permission. They look available, and using one produces a red message across the top of the screen instead of doing anything:
- Reopen… on a closed month. The button opens the Reopen June 2026 dialog as usual, and the refusal only arrives when you confirm with Reopen June 2026. Its own greyed-out state is reserved for a different reason — Only the latest closed period can be reopened — reopen later months first. — so a live Reopen… button tells you the month is the latest closed one, not that you may reopen it.
- Capture provider balances, in the Report pack header, which refuses on the click itself. It only appears while the month is open; a closed month does not offer it at all.
- The tick boxes on manual checklist items. Their disabled states are also about the month rather than about you: Start the close to check items off, This period is closed — the checklist is read-only, and Working — one moment.
In all three cases the red message is the same generic line — User does not have the right permissions. It does not name the permission that is missing, so match the action against the table above to work out which one you need.
Nothing is changed when one of these fails — no partial close, no half-ticked item. Try again once your role has the permission.
The one place the screen reads your permission back to you
Inside the Close June 2026 dialog, the panel for an overridable blocking check
changes wording depending on whether you hold accounting.period.override.
Without it, the amber panel offers no reason box and says:
This normally blocks the close. You don't have the accounting.period.override permission, so it has to be resolved before June 2026 can close — or ask someone who holds it to close the month.
The Close June 2026 button stays disabled, and its tooltip names the check:
"Inventory debt settled" blocks the close, and you don't have permission to close over it.
With the permission, the same panel offers a Why is this being closed over? box, and the button unlocks once you have typed a reason.
This is the only permission the Close tab spells out by name on screen, and
you only reach it if you already hold accounting.manage_settings — the dialog
opens from Close period.
What a read-only viewer can do
Someone with accounting.index alone is not locked out of the close in any
meaningful reading sense. They can:
- Open the Close tab and switch between months in the Periods rail.
- Read the whole Close checklist, including the Blocking chips, the one-line result on each check, the Acknowledged at close stamps, and the sign-off line on a closed month.
- Open all nine reports in the Report pack on screen.
- Run Verify on a closed month and read the At close and Live now columns, along with each report's matches, drifted or changed (informational) verdict.
- Read the Sync status — why isn't everything on the provider? breakdown and follow its View links through to the entries behind each reason.
What they cannot do is start a close, change a checklist, download the workbook, close a month or reopen one. That combination — full visibility, no authority — is the right grant for an outside accountant, an auditor or a reviewer who signs off on the numbers without operating the software.
Warn them that the screen does not fence all of it off in advance. Start close, Re-check, Export pack and Close period go grey, but Reopen…, Capture provider balances and the tick boxes stay live and refuse only once pressed. A reviewer who ticks a manual item and sees a red User does not have the right permissions. has not broken anything — the tick did not take, and that is all.
Choosing what to grant
- Bookkeeper who prepares the month:
accounting.index+accounting.sync. They can do all the work and hand the sign-off to someone else. - Controller who signs off: add
accounting.manage_settings. Addaccounting.period.overridetoo if they should be able to close a month whose inventory debt is still outstanding. - Reviewer, auditor or client:
accounting.indexalone. - Administrator: nothing to grant — they already pass every check.