Periodic contracts, such as support contracts, are mostly paid with the full value up-front. However, the revenue cannot be recognised immediately, but needs to be recognised as the work is done. In practice, this means that a portion of the income needs to be recognised each month over the length of the contract, whilst the remainder of the income is stored in an 'unearned income' account. The same applies for support contracts that are bought in full, upfront - in this case, the outgoings are stored in a 'pre-payments' account.

The module creates a separate record, which records the details of each general journal that needs to be created and the date on which it needs to be posted. Then the built-in OpenERP scheduler runs on the last day of each month and reads the scheduled journal records, creating general journals. So the general journals are automatically created on the effective date, ensuring that the account balances are correct. This approach provides an audit trail as it is possible to look at the history of the scheduled journal records.