Locking a year

Once your assets are settled, lock the year. Giving stays open, and if something genuinely changes later there is an amendment trail rather than a quiet edit.

A year stays open while you are still working it out. When your assets are settled, lock it.

The four steps

At the top of an open year's worksheet is a strip of four steps:

Each step has a coloured icon, a green tick once it is done, and the first step still to do is outlined. Tap any step to go straight to it. Lock the year is step 3, so you no longer have to know it is tucked inside the ⋮ menu — it is also there, as it always was.

Beneath the steps the page says what locking does: Locking makes this year's figures final. Giving stays open.

What locking does

Lock the year asks Lock the year? and then takes a copy of Your assets as they stand that day, and makes final:

• every asset line and its value
• the rates that were applied

The copy is what makes an old year trustworthy. From that moment the year has its own lines, and changing your assets afterwards — a new bank account, a repayment, a sold plot — cannot move it. Your assets list goes on being current; the year stays as you settled it.

It does not lock your giving. You carry on recording what you give afterwards — that is the normal way round, since giving usually continues past the day you settle the figures. A locked year says so at the top: Locked on 7 Feb 2027 · giving still open.

Why it matters

An unlocked year is a moving target. Lock it and:

• the total stops being provisional
• Rates used preserves what was applied, so the year explains itself later
• it becomes a settled point in Across the years — an open year only joins the chart provisionally

A locked year stays readable

Locking a year does not hide it. Open any locked year and everything is still there to see — every asset line with its value, the calculation, and the Giving row showing who was paid and how much. You just cannot change the asset figures without an amendment. Nothing is buried behind Amend; amending is only for changing.

On a locked year the steps are still there. Steps 1 and 3 are informational — a locked year takes no new assets and has nothing left to lock — while the other two take you to the calculation and the giving list.

Amendments

Locked does not mean untouchable. If something was genuinely wrong — a plot valued from the wrong figure, an account you forgot — you amend it.

Here is the real flow. Amend puts the year into amend mode: a banner says the year is being amended, and its lines can be edited again. Make your changes on the worksheet, then open ⋮ and choose Lock the year again — or Cancel amend from the same menu if you change your mind; nothing is written until you lock again.

Lock the year again asks Amend this year?. The figures it shows are worked out again from this year's lines and rates, and it offers two ways to lock them:

Use the first for a wrong number. Use the second when the year was locked with the wrong list — a whole account missing, say.

Either way the dialog's own Lock the year again button stays off until you have written What changed (required).

The rhythm of a year

Only step 4 is irreversible-ish, and even then only through an amendment with a note.