Period Close

A period close is an explicit, auditable checkpoint in the ledger. It marks the end of an accounting period (e.g. a billing month) and enables quota resets, credit expirations, and rollover grants.

Unlike a background job that silently rewrites a counter, a period close creates a permanent record in the journal. If a user asks why their quota reset at a particular time, the period close is the answer.

Idempotency

Period closes are idempotent: closing the same period twice returns the existing close record without creating a duplicate. This makes it safe to retry period-close operations without side effects.

Merkle integrity

To guarantee that the journal entries recorded in a closed period remain untampered, Trancent computes a Merkle hash tree over all entries at close time. The root hash is stored alongside the period close record. Any party can later recompute the tree from the entries and compare the root; a mismatch indicates data divergence. This provides a lightweight, auditable checksum that survives exports and backups.

Ledger states