An Accounting Period defines a time period in which financial statements are recorded. In Parsimony, Accounting Period is a timeframe outside which selected submittable transactions (like Sales/Purchase Invoice, Stock Entry, Payroll Entry, Journal Entry etc) are not allowed to be created. In other words, the selected transactions are only allowed to be created within the defined Accounting Period. Why is Accounting Period needed? When transactions are submitted, they affect the ledgers and the reports which process the ledger data. This can cause issues when financial reports have to be generated for audit by authorities or for closing the accounting books for the financial year. Here Accounting Period can be used to limit the time period within which transactions can be submitted to preserve the integrity of the corresponding reports.