Period Scope
The explicit time windows used to rebuild balances, P&L, and other financial views.
Period scope
Every financial view in O2A is scoped to an explicit time window. A view always carries a concrete period start and period end, and only the Ledger Events inside that window feed it. Presets like "this quarter" or "all time" are just convenient ways to choose a window — they always resolve to one concrete pair of timestamps.
How It Works
A view's period filter is inclusive on both ends: an event counts when its timestamp is at or after the period start and at or before the period end. "All time" is not a special mode — it is the preset whose stable baseline is a period start of zero and a period end of "now". When views are shown together or compared, they must use the same window so the two sides line up.
Statements
These statements fix the period-scoping contract:
- A financial view has a period start and a period end.
- Period start is the inclusive lower boundary.
- Period end is the inclusive upper boundary.
- Financial comparison uses a shared period window.
- An all-time view is a period preset.
- A period preset resolves to an explicit period window.
Why It Matters
Period scope is what makes financial comparisons honest. Expected and realized cost of goods, allocated shared costs, margins, and node P&L only mean something when both sides of a comparison are bounded by the same window. Making the window explicit removes any ambiguity about what "the numbers" cover.