Subledger Locking: Close on Your Terms
Month-end close has always had a coordination problem. As finance teams grow and operations get more complex, whether due to multiple subsidiaries, integrated AP tools like Ramp, or international entities (or all of the above), the old binary of "open" or "closed" stops working.
Here's what that looks like in practice: You may have two people working on AP and AR. Monthly billing work is done, and you’re ready to start reviews, but expenses still need to sync from your AP tool, and you don’t want any more invoices to be approved while you review AR. But because you can't lock AR independently, you’re forced to hold off on your reviews and reconciliations or risk more changes to the subledger before you can finalize it. Backlogs pile up. Payments get delayed. Close becomes a bottleneck for the whole business.
Close management in an automated, multi-team system requires surgical precision, not an on/off switch. That’s why we built Subledger Locking.
How Rillet Does It Better
Subledger Locking lets you lock AP and AR subledgers by subsidiary, independently, before fully closing the period. It's a layer of precision on top of Rillet's Close Management, giving finance teams surgical control over the close process instead of a single binary close.
AR and AP are where we started, but more subledgers are coming.
How It Works
Lock → Enforce → Close.
- Lock: From the Close Management page, users see a matrix of subledgers (AR and AP, for now) by subsidiary. They can lock individual subledgers, bulk-lock all AR across subsidiaries, or lock all subledgers for one subsidiary.
- Enforce: Once a subledger is locked, the system enforces it. JEs, invoices, bills, and credit memos are all blocked from posting to a locked subledger. There's no manual policing required thanks to the in-built guardrails.
- Close: Once the last subledger across all subsidiaries is locked, the books close with one motion.
What Makes This Different
Many accounting systems treat period close as binary. You lock the period, nothing posts. Full stop.
What they don't account for is the fact that modern finance teams don't operate that way. Different subledgers close on different timelines. AP needs more time than AR. One subsidiary is done before another.
Subledger Locking is built for today’s reality. The lock means what it says, instantly.
Built on Real-Time Architecture
This feature works with a continuous close, not against it. While real-time integrations and journal entry creation allow for ease of preparation, subledger locks are the natural counterpart to continuous close that allow you to control the entire ledger and allow you to effectively manage the people working in the system.
No conflicts, no bottlenecks. Our check happens live. Your books are accurate the moment a lock is applied.
What's Next
AP and AR are the most common subledgers, so that’s where we started, but this is just the beginning. We're expanding to additional subledger types based on what you need most.
Now, for the first time, your accounting team can move at its own pace. AP locked, AR still open? No one waiting, nothing slipping through.
