Allocation rules and accounting periods

Allocation rules decide which initiatives a finance system's bills book to, and in what shares. Accounting periods let your finance team sign off a month so its costs and approved value can't change afterwards. Both come with every plan, Free included. Allocations appears under Finance in the sidebar once your account has an active QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite or American Express connection. Without one, Accounting Periods appears there instead, so an account whose figures are typed in or imported closes its months too. Until you write a rule for a platform, vendor mappings on each connection book its bills: see Vendors, shares and recurring costs.

What an allocation rule does

A rule covers one platform (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite or American Express) and, optionally, one vendor. Every bill it matches is split among the initiatives in its splits, and each initiative's part is booked as a cost entry. The rule covers everything that platform's sync brings in, bills and card or bank transactions alike.

Rules take over from vendor mappings one platform at a time. Once your account has an active rule for a platform, that platform's bills go through its rules only, and every vendor mapping on its connections stops booking. A platform with no active rule keeps booking through its mappings. On Integrations → Unlinked, a connection whose platform has an active rule shows under Booked by allocation rules, and a finance connection with no rule yet offers New allocation rule.

So when you write the first rule for a platform, write one for every vendor on it you want booked. A bill that no rule matches books to no initiative, and shows under Unmapped bills in that month's reconciliation. If two rules match the same bill, the older rule books it.

Creating a rule

Open Finance → Allocations → Rules and choose New Rule:

Name — a rule Roiva names after its vendor and initiatives is renamed when they change. Type your own to keep it.
Start and end dates — the bill dates the rule covers, as whole days. A new rule starts on the earliest bill on your books and card connections that nothing has booked yet, so it also books what they've already synced. It never starts in or before a locked month. Clear the start to start the rule the day it's approved, and leave the end empty to keep it open.
Source filter — the Platform, and the Vendor name match: Exact name ignores case, punctuation and endings like Inc or LLC, and Contains matches any vendor name with it in. Leave the vendor empty to match every vendor on the platform.
Split method — Fixed shares gives each initiative its percentage of every bill. In proportion to each initiative's costs shares each bill by what each initiative spent on a Driver cost type over the Lookback (days) before the bill.
Splits — one row per initiative, with its Share, cost type and category. Add initiative adds a row. Fixed shares can add up to less than 100%: what they leave is unassigned, booked to no initiative, and stays on the bill's account in your books.

Create rule saves it as a draft, which books nothing. Anyone in the account can view and draft rules.

Approving and changing rules

Click a rule in the list to open it in a panel beside the list, with Approve, Edit and Archive. Approving or archiving a rule takes an Owner, an Admin, or a finance reviewer.

Approving a new rule makes it active from its start date, and starts a sync of its platform's connections, which books the bills dated from then that nothing has booked yet. Bills something already booked stay where they are. With no start date, the rule starts the day it's approved and books no earlier bills.
Editing an active rule saves your change as a draft revision (Save as draft revision), and the rule keeps booking as it was. Once the revision is approved, it books bills dated from that day on, and the old version keeps the bills dated before. A rule can only have one revision waiting at a time.
Archiving stops the rule booking new bills. Bills it already booked stay booked. When a platform has no active rule left, its vendor mappings book again.

Bills already booked never move on their own when a rule changes. To re-split a vendor's past bills at new shares, use Set share on the initiative's Costs → Vendors tab and date the change back.

Rules made for you

When an Owner, Admin or finance reviewer accepts vendors under Suggested from your books, which an initiative's Add costs menu opens from its Costs tab, Roiva creates a rule for each vendor, routing its bills dated from that day to the initiative. The rule is active straight away, with no separate approval. Anyone else who accepts adds the past bills only. A rule made this way says so under Origin on its page. When the vendor already has a rule, the initiative joins it instead.

On an initiative's Costs → Vendors tab, an Owner, Admin or finance reviewer can also change a rule's share or matching for that initiative, or take the initiative off it. Those changes take effect straight away, from bills dated that day.

Accounting periods

Finance → Allocations → Accounting Periods lists each month an allocation rule has booked bills in, and each month someone has opened to close, with its status: Open, In review, Locked or Reopened. Open a month to see its allocations: each bill, the rule that split it and each initiative's share. In an account without a finance connection the page is Finance → Accounting Periods.

Below the list, Months to close names the last twelve finished months that have no period yet. Choosing one opens it, ready to lock.

Preparing, locking and reopening take an Owner, an Admin, or a finance reviewer:

Prepare for lock appears on an Open or Reopened month once journal posting is set up (see GL Mapping below). It builds a proposed journal entry for each bill, which reclasses the bill's amount to each initiative in your books, and moves the month to In review.
Lock and post to your books, on a month in review, posts those journal entries and locks the month. The button names the books the entries post to: QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite. Lock period locks a month without posting anything. If a post fails, the month isn't locked and stays in review, and the journal entry shows why it failed. Entries that posted before it stay posted, because your books kept them. Fix the problem and lock again: it posts the rest, starting with the one that failed.
A month in review still books bills as they sync. A bill booked into it after it was prepared has no journal entry, and one whose amount, split or account in your books changed, or whose initiative's dimension value changed, no longer matches its entry. The month won't lock while it holds either: the month's page lists those bills, and so does the message when you try to lock. Prepare again rebuilds the month's journal entries from its bills as they stand: it adds entries for new bills, rebuilds changed ones, and drops entries for bills that were re-split or moved to another month. Then lock it. While a month is locking or reopening, including while its entries or reversals post, synced bills, recorded costs, approvals and changes to the GL mapping across your account wait until it's done. A change you save waits up to ten seconds; if the month is still posting then, Roiva stops and asks you to check what was saved and try again in a minute. A sync waits up to ten minutes, and a bill still waiting then is booked on a later sync. An entry your books already accepted, from a lock that stopped partway, stays as posted, and Roiva keeps its bill as booked.
A month that holds amounts in another currency waits for the European Central Bank's rates for that month before it locks. Until the last of them is published, a cost in another currency counts at the latest rate, and approved value in another currency has no dollar figure yet. Locked then, both would stay that way. The month's page says so, and so does the message when you try to lock. The rates are usually in within two working days of the month's end. An amount in a currency the ECB doesn't publish never converts, so it doesn't hold the lock. A tracker import that closes such a month leaves it open, with a note.
If your books don't answer a post, for example because it timed out or a server between Roiva and your books failed, they may have kept the entry anyway. The month's page lists it as Sent, no answer. Roiva won't rebuild, re-key or drop it, and keeps its bill as booked, so the bill can't go into your books twice. Lock the month again to send it again under the same key: Xero and QuickBooks answer with the entry they kept, if they kept one. NetSuite refuses an entry it already has, and the page then shows why it was refused. Or check your books and use the buttons beside the bill, such as It's in Xero or It isn't in Xero, to record what you found. An entry you mark as missing is sent again, under a new key, the next time the month locks. A reversal that got no answer while reopening works the same way: choose Approve reopen again, or record whether your books have it.
Request reopen needs a Reason to reopen. The month stays locked until someone else who can lock months (an Owner, an Admin or a finance reviewer) chooses Approve reopen on it, or Decline. They're notified, the request waits in their Inbox, and once it has waited longer than the Approval SLA (days) they get the same daily reminder approvals do. You can Withdraw request. If nobody else can lock months, the button is Reopen and the month reopens at once, and the audit log says nobody else could approve it. Reopening posts a reversing entry for each journal the last lock posted, unlocks the month and records the reason, who asked and who approved. If a reversal fails, the month stays locked, and the request stays for Approve reopen to post the reversals that are left; it can't be declined or withdrawn once a reversal has posted. To post corrected journals, prepare the month and lock it again.

Card charges from a card platform, such as American Express statements, get no journal entry, because Roiva doesn't know which account in your books holds them. They show a No journal badge. Tag them to their initiatives in your books.

What locking prevents

Locking freezes every cost entry in your account dated in that month, whether a rule booked it or someone recorded it by hand, and every approved value entry dated in it:

Nobody can change or delete those cost entries until the month is reopened.
Nothing new is recorded in the month. That covers a bill that arrives late or that a vendor mapping or rule matches after the close, past costs you add from your books, a CSV import and a cost recorded by hand. Syncs leave those bills unbooked. Add selected costs says how many past bills it left out, an import fails the row and says why, and the cost form won't save a date in a locked month.
Nobody can edit, send back or delete an approved value entry whose period starts in that month, and no entry dated in it can be approved. An entry with no period belongs to the month it was approved in.
A formula still calculates the month's entries, but they wait for a person, and approving them waits for the month to be reopened.
If a reading an approved entry in the month was calculated from changes, or a CRM deal it was booked from, the entry's page and the Inbox say so, but it can be sent back only once the month is reopened.
A formula's Value type can't change while any of its entries are approved as another type (see How value is calculated), and the month's approved entries can't be sent back until it's reopened, so they keep the type they were reported as.
A recurring cost skips the locked month and says so.
Re-splitting a vendor's past bills leaves that month's bills as booked.
An allocation rule books no new bills in that month, even one whose start date reaches back past it.
Reopening the month starts a sync of your cost connections, which books the bills the lock held back. Past costs from your books are offered again on the initiative's suggestions panel.

Reconciliation and PBC packets

Reconciliation on a month's page ties it out, one currency at a time: the source bills total, what's unassigned, what's allocated, and posted journal entries. It lists Variances, allocations whose lines don't add up to what their rule assigned, and Unmapped bills.

Generate PBC packet on the reconciliation page builds a ZIP for your auditors, with a cover sheet and CSVs of the month's summary, rules, allocations, source bills, journal entries and audit log. You get a notification when it's ready, and it's under Recent PBC packets on the month's page to Download. Generating one takes an Owner, Admin or finance reviewer.

Finance settings

An Owner or Admin finds these in Organization Settings, below its other pages, or by typing their name into Search… at the top of the page:

Finance Reviewers — lets people approve allocation rules, lock and reopen periods, and generate PBC packets without being an Admin. Owners and Admins can always do these, and the page lists them by role. Choose someone and Add reviewer.
GL Mapping — how journal entries post to Xero, NetSuite or QuickBooks: the dimension that tags each initiative (a Xero tracking category, or a NetSuite department, class or location), a default account code, and each initiative's dimension value. Turn on Enable posting to the GL and Save GL mapping. A month's page links here with Set up the GL mapping until it's done.
Auditor Links — a time-limited, read-only link for your external auditor, who needs no Roiva account. They see every locked month and can download PBC packets, and each visit is logged. Set Expires in (days) (90 by default) and Generate, then copy the link: it's shown only once. Revoke cuts it off.

Vendors, shares and recurring costs — vendor mappings, shares and suggestions on one initiative
Linking connections to initiatives — connecting a finance system to initiatives in the first place