The period, the four statuses, and the starting gun
In ARCS the period is not a calendar label, it is a machine with four states, and moving between them runs real work: auto-reconciliations fire at Open, beginnings stop at Closed, and everything stops at Locked.
Note: In ARCS, Oracle's account reconciliation module, work is organized by period: each month's reconciliations are created, worked, and closed inside that month's period. The period's status controls what can happen, which is what this page explains.
One question this page answers: what exactly happens in the system at the moment you open a period, and why is Closed not the end? The whole module is mapped on the Account Reconciliation index.
◆ The four statuses, Pending, Open, Closed, Locked, and the work each transition runs.
| Period status | What it means, and what it triggers |
|---|---|
| Pending | The period exists, the reconciliations do not act. Everything copied in by createReconciliations waits here. |
| Open | The starting gun. Per Oracle's period doc, opening the period runs every auto-reconciliation whose start date has arrived. Anything that qualifies closes on the spot. Anything skipped or failed, no balances loaded, transactions present, a zero-balance test that found a balance, drops to Open with Preparer and emails the preparer. |
| Closed | Closed stops new reconciliations from starting. It does not stop work in flight, and it does not stop balance loads from touching the period. Even comments can still be added to a closed reconciliation while the period is unlocked, a control gap users ask about on the forums. Closed is a gate on beginnings, not an archive. |
| Locked | The end state. Balance loads stop and reconciliations stop changing. Lock is what auditors mean when they ask if the period is done. One honest footnote from the field: a live thread reports action plan attributes staying editable even in a locked period, so if your controls rely on Lock, test that edge in your own pod. |
◆ The three levers, setPeriodStatus, the REST resource, and the Pipeline job type that arrived in 25.08.
Three ways to move a period, all current as of this writing. The setPeriodStatus command in EPM Automate for scripts. The Set Period Status REST resource for anything that polls. And since the 25.08 update, a Pipeline job type inside Data Integration, which finally brought orchestration to ARCS after years of forum asks; the pipeline itself can be fired by runPipeline from EPM Automate or REST. One documented subtlety worth quoting straight from the release note: when a pipeline sets a period to Open, the returned job tracks the reopening of the reconciliations, and the period stays Open even if some of those reopenings fail. The period status and the job status are two different answers; check both.
◆ One month in the sixty-entity group, the June open, the May tail, and the lock discipline shared with FCCS.
The sixty-entity group opens June on the first business day. 118 of the 412 reconciliations auto-close at the gun; the rest of the population starts its walk through the workflow. May sits Closed, not Locked, because late adjustments still arrive through mid-June, and the group locks a month only when its FCCS entities lock, prior periods first, the same discipline as the consolidation status page. What a balance load does to a Closed period's finished reconciliations is the whole subject of the balance loads page, and it is the sharpest edge in the module.
The problem: Loads keep landing in periods everyone thought were finished.
What we build: Period statuses export nightly and the load schedule is wired against the close calendar.
What you get: Locks and loads live on one calendar, and a load into a done month becomes impossible, not unlikely.
- Pending
- Period exists, reconciliations wait.
- Open
- Auto-reconciliations run, preparers are notified. The starting gun.
- Closed
- No new starts. Loads and work in flight continue.
- Locked
- Nothing changes anymore. The real end of the period.