Closing the financial year in SamBooks: the year-end procedure

The statutory year-end closing, step by step: what SamBooks checks before it lets you start, the entries it actually generates, what it locks from that moment on, and how to reopen the new year.

What this is for

Closing is one of three tabs on the Adjusting entries page (left-hand menu, under Accounting), alongside Financial years and Adjusting entries itself. It applies the statutory year-end closing procedure (Italian Civil Code, artt. 2423-2425): it transfers the year's revenues and costs to the income statement, computes profit or loss and moves it to reserves, transfers the balance sheet to a closing account — and from that moment locks the year against new entries.

This guide only covers closing going forward: where it sits in the whole year's sequence is explained in The yearly accounting cycle in SamBooks; what to do when a period lock (a settled VAT period or a closed financial year) stops you from posting something is the dedicated guide Why can't I post: VAT period settled or financial year closed.

Before you start

• You need a role with posting rights on accounting — Manager or Administrative; Viewer and Logistics can neither close nor reopen a financial year.
• Companies on the flat-rate scheme (RF19) never see the Adjusting entries page in the sidebar, and with it this tab: the flat-rate scheme has neither periodic VAT settlements nor financial statements, so there's nothing to close in this sense.
• Companies on simplified accounting are excluded the same way: the Adjusting entries entry stays hidden from the menu.
• By default the financial year is a calendar year, 1 January to 31 December; for a non-calendar year (e.g. 1/7-30/6) or a company's first year at incorporation, define it first in the Financial years tab of the same page — both the closing date and the reopening date will follow the boundaries you set there, not the calendar.
• If you carry stock, record the year-end physical inventory before you close: once the year is closed, the entry that adjusts inventory differences has no exception in the lock and gets rejected (detail below).

How to do it, step by step

1. Open the Closing tab

Go to Accounting → Adjusting entries from the sidebar, then select the "Closing" tab (the other two are "Financial years" and "Adjusting entries"). The page is titled "Year-end closing", subtitled "Close the financial year, transfer profit/loss, reopen the new year."

2. Read the two pre-flight checks — and know what they actually verify

At the top of the tab is the "Pre-flight check" card, with two entries and a direct link to each page:

• VAT quarterly returns — "All quarterly VAT returns (LIPE) must be closed and paid.", with the "Go to VAT returns" link.
• Balance sheet check — "Verify trial balance (total debit = total credit).", with the "Go to Financial statements" link.

The second check is real and blocks closing if the CEE balance sheet doesn't balance. The first promises more than SamBooks actually verifies: it doesn't check that the tax payment forms (F24) were paid, only that a computed settlement exists for every period — 12 months if you're on monthly VAT, 3 quarters if quarterly. For companies on quarterly-by-option VAT (Italian art. 7 DPR 542/1999), the fourth quarter flows into the yearly VAT balance instead of a periodic settlement; the product's check applies the same threshold of 3 to every quarterly company regardless. If even one settlement is missing, the message you'll see — in Italian, since SamBooks doesn't localise this text even for an English-language account — is:

"Per chiudere l'esercizio {anno} mancano delle liquidazioni IVA: ne risultano {N} su {M} richieste ({mesi/trimestri}, regime {periodicità}). Vai in «Liquidazioni IVA», genera i {periodo} mancanti dell'anno {anno} e riprova a chiudere l'esercizio." (To close financial year {year}, some VAT settlements are missing: {N} out of {M} required exist. Go to VAT settlements, generate the missing ones for {year} and try again.)

For companies on the flat-rate scheme this check doesn't apply at all — but, as noted above, a flat-rate company never even reaches this page.

3. Start the closing and confirm

Below the pre-flight checks is the box with the "Close year {anno}" button (the placeholder fills in with the actual year, e.g. "Close year 2025"): SamBooks proposes the first still-open year in sequence on its own — the year after the last recorded closing, or last year if you haven't closed anything yet. You can't pick a different year from this button: to close a specific year out of sequence, ask Sam and name the year.

Clicking opens a confirmation window, "Close financial year 2025?", with the text "Closing entries will be generated (revenues/costs to the income statement, profit/loss to reserves) and year 2025 will be locked. The operation is idempotent." This window is a confirmation notice, not a preview of the entries: you don't see the amounts or accounts involved beforehand, only the request to confirm with "Close year" or cancel with "Cancel". It is, however, the only one of the two paths that asks for confirmation at all — see "Ask Sam" below.

On confirmation, the message reads "Year 2025 closed." — or "Year already closed." if someone had already closed it earlier: the operation is idempotent, calling it again doesn't duplicate anything.

4. The entries it generates

SamBooks writes up to three journal entries in sequence, dated on the financial year's last day (31 December for a calendar-year company, the last day of the period you defined for a non-calendar year):

1. Income statement closing (reason code CHIUS-CE) — every cost or revenue account with a non-zero balance is closed with a line of opposite sign to its balance, offset against the transitional account named in Italian "Conto economico per chiusura" ("Income statement closing account").
2. Financial year result (reason code RIS-ES) — the income-statement transitional account closes into the account named "Utile (perdita) dell'esercizio" ("Profit (loss) for the year"): credit side if the year closes in profit, debit side if it closes in a loss. If the result is exactly break-even (zero), this entry is not issued at all: in that case only two entries remain, not three.
3. Balance sheet closing (reason code CHIUS-SP) — every balance-sheet account with a non-zero balance (including the profit/loss account just posted) closes into the transitional account named "Bilancio di chiusura" ("Balance sheet closing account"), which by construction ends at zero.

These three account names come straight from the chart of accounts, which isn't localised either: you'll see them in Italian regardless of your interface language. All three entries share the same origin (that year's closing record) and their sum always balances (debit = credit), by construction — but closing isn't among the origins that open a direct link on the entry itself: you'll find the three lines by filtering the general ledger by origin, not through an "Open origin" button on the entry.

5. What a closed year locks — and the real exceptions

Once a financial year is closed, no new entry dated in that year is accepted — not from a manual entry, and not from a sales or purchase invoice or a receipt that would generate one in that year. The message you'll run into — again in Italian only — is: "Esercizio {anno} chiuso: nessuna nuova scrittura ammessa. Riapri l'esercizio (riapertura/storno della chiusura) oppure correggi la data di competenza della scrittura." (Financial year {anno} closed: no new entries allowed. Reopen the financial year or fix the entry's accrual date.) The full detail of this lock, together with the VAT-settlement lock and the "merely locked" (not closed) year, is in Why can't I post.

The lock declares only two exceptions: the three closing entries just described (otherwise closing would block itself) and the entry recognising deferred tax assets/liabilities (OIC 25), which by nature is posted against an already-closed balance sheet. Two other paths post regardless, because they build the entry without going through this check at all: the VAT self-assessment entry for a reverse-charge self-invoice, and importing opening balances from a previous accounting system. These aren't declared exceptions, they're separate technical routes — don't rely on them to work around the lock on purpose.

6. Check the closing history

Below the button is the "Closing history" table, with columns Year · Closing date · Profit/Loss · Entries · Status. Status shows as "Closed" or "Reopened" (a different badge); as long as a row is still "Closed", it also shows a button to reopen the following year starting from that closing — on the row for the 2025 closing, for example, the button reads "Open 2026". With no closing recorded yet, the table shows "No closing recorded — First closing will appear here."

7. Reopen the new year

From the row of the closing you need, press the "Open" button: for the 2025 closing, the confirmation "Open financial year 2026?" opens, with the text "Opening entries for year 2026 will be generated from the closing of 2025." Confirming with "Open year", SamBooks writes a single opening entry (reason code RIAP-ES), the exact reverse of the balance-sheet closing: it recreates the opening balances of every balance-sheet account, while income-statement accounts start again from zero — it's the new year's activity resuming, not a duplicate of the closing.

Mind the date: reopening isn't fixed to "1 January" by definition — it's dated on the first day of the new financial year, the day after the closed one ends. For a calendar-year company that coincides with 1 January, but for a non-calendar year (e.g. 1/7-30/6) it's 1 July: if you've defined custom financial years in the "Financial years" tab, that boundary decides the date, not the calendar.

The text under the table sums it up: "Reopen the next year from the «Open» button in the matching closing row (or ask Sam)."

8. If you closed by mistake

Here the platform is asymmetric: reopening has a dedicated button (step 7), undoing a closing you just made doesn't. No page has an "Undo closing" command: if you notice right away, before posting anything else in the year you just closed, ask Sam to revert the action, in the same conversation where you asked it to close — that's the only place Sam looks for actions to undo. If you closed it from the button on this page, or opened a new chat, and Sam can't find a recent action to revert, it's a known platform limit: don't force anything, contact support before posting anything else in that year.

What closing doesn't do

• It doesn't propose year-end inventory. If you carry stock, the year-end physical inventory count is a separate path — dedicated guide — to complete BEFORE you close (see "Before you start"): closing neither generates it nor reminds you of it. It's a known limit flagged to the product team, not a choice for you to work around here.
• It doesn't prepare tax filings. Income tax, the annual VAT return, the withholding tax certification and other obligations stay in the Tax returns area, with the boundary explained in Where SamBooks stops and the accountant takes over: closing is an accounting prerequisite, not a filing.
• It doesn't touch the chart of accounts or depreciation rates: if you're still missing accrual adjustments (accruals, deferrals, depreciation), generate them first in the "Adjusting entries" tab of the same page — closing works on the balances it finds, it doesn't correct them.

Ask Sam

You can ask Sam to close or reopen a financial year: "close the 2025 financial year", "open the 2026 financial year". Be aware: for this operation Sam doesn't ask for confirmation and doesn't show a preview — asking it in chat writes all three entries and locks the year immediately. The on-page button (step 3), not the chat, is the only one of the two paths with a confirmation window before it writes anything. Use Sam mainly to close a specific year out of the sequence the button proposes, knowing the execution is immediate. A closing Sam makes stays visible and revertible in its action log — but you can only ask it to undo one in the same conversation where it was made.

If something's wrong

• "Some VAT settlements are missing" (Italian message, see step 2) — go to VAT settlements, generate the missing months or quarters for the year shown, then try again. The check only looks at whether the settlement exists, not whether the linked tax payment form was paid.
• «Bilancio CEE non quadra» (CEE balance sheet doesn't balance — Italian message, backend text isn't localised) — open the Financial statements page and check the balancing badge at the top: an account with no CEE line assigned is the most common cause of an apparent imbalance.
• The button proposes a different year than I need — it's always the first still-open year in sequence; for a different year, ask Sam.
• I closed the wrong financial year — see step 8: ask Sam to revert it right away, in that same conversation, before posting anything else in that year.
• I can't find the "Open" button — it only appears on closings not yet reopened (status "Closed", not "Reopened"); if it's missing, that year has already been reopened.
• A year-end inventory adjustment won't post anymore — the financial year is already closed: physical inventory isn't one of the lock's exceptions, it has to be done before closing.

Frequently asked questions

How do I close the financial year in SamBooks? Accounting → Adjusting entries → "Closing" tab → "Close year" button (labelled with the actual year, e.g. "Close year 2025") → confirm in the window that opens. SamBooks proposes the first still-open year on its own.

What does SamBooks check before letting me close? That a computed VAT settlement exists for every month or quarter of the year (not that it was paid) and that the CEE balance sheet balances. Neither check applies to companies on the flat-rate scheme, which don't see this page anyway.

How many entries does closing generate? Three: income statement closing, profit/loss transfer, balance sheet closing. If the year's result is an exact break-even, the second entry isn't issued and only two remain.

How do I reopen the financial year after closing it? From the closing history, the "Open" button on the row of the starting closing (for the 2025 closing, "Open 2026"), or by asking Sam.

Is reopening always on 1 January? No: it's dated on the first day of the new financial year, the day after the closed one ends. It only coincides with 1 January for a calendar-year company.

Is asking Sam to close the year safer than the button? No, the opposite: Sam executes immediately, without asking for confirmation or showing a preview. The on-page button is the only one of the two paths with a confirmation window.

I closed the wrong financial year, how do I fix it? There's no undo button in the interface: ask Sam right away, in the same conversation where it closed the year, before posting anything else in that year. If the closing was done from the button, or you're in a new chat, Sam may not find anything to undo: contact support.

Does closing also post year-end inventory? No: it's an open limit, flagged to the team. Record the physical inventory BEFORE closing — afterwards the adjustment entry is rejected like any other entry on a closed year.

Can I close a different year than the one the button proposes? Not from this page: it always proposes the first still-open year in sequence. For a specific year out of sequence, ask Sam.

Related features

• The yearly accounting cycle in SamBooks — where closing sits in the whole year's sequence.
• Why can't I post: VAT period settled or financial year closed — the lock closing creates, and how to get out of it.
• Generating accruals, deferrals and period-end adjusting entries — the adjustments to make before closing.
• Reading the CEE financial statements — the balancing required at step 2.
• Calculating the VAT settlement — the settlements required at step 2.
• Recording the year-end physical inventory — to do before closing, not after.