Closing fiscal time periods doesn't provide the data cleanup benefit as with closing time reporting periods (Timesheet periods). While closing timesheet periods will allow the Delete Investments job to remove timesheet records, closing fiscal time periods simply mark the records in biz_com_periods table as not open. Deleting the inactive periods only delete the records in biz_com_periods, one row per period, nothing more.
I can only think of a couple benefits for deactivating fiscal time periods: limit the list users have to go through when picking the periods they want; having the chance to modify the newly created ones before it's too late (see restriction below)
The only thing that would stop you from deactivating then deleting a fiscal time period is when it is used in any financial plan, and that includes cost plan, benefit plan and budget plan. When that happens, you can try to modify the plans so that they no longer cover the fiscal time periods that you want to deactivate.
If you have any un-editable BUDGET plan that uses or covers the fiscal time period you want to deactivate, you will not be able to deactivate the fiscal time period; if you have any COST plan that uses it, you can always modify the plan From and/or To dates to move the plan duration outside of the fiscal time period ((***caution***: you will lose the plan data)); if the plan is a Plan of Record, you can make a copy of it, modify the copy, make the copy your new Plan of Record, then delete the original plan; you can always modify a BENEFIT plan.
As users start doing more financial planning, the likelihood of hitting the restriction on deactivating a fiscal time period increases; this would be a good reason for keeping your newly created fiscal time periods inactive until they are ready to be used and you are sure that they would not need to be modified.
Here is a simply query I keep handy for finding the financial plans that use certain fiscal time period(s), this query assumes only one entity exists in the system:
Oracle Query, Clarity 8.x and above:
SELECT f.OBJECT_CODE Investment_Type,
i.CODE Investment_Code,
i.NAME Investment_name,
DECODE(f.PLAN_TYPE_CODE,NULL,'BENEFIT',f.PLAN_TYPE_CODE) FinPlan_Type,
f.CODE FinPlan_Code,
f.NAME FinPlan_Name,
f.STATUS_CODE
FROM FIN_PLANS f, INV_INVESTMENTS i
WHERE f.START_PERIOD_ID IN (SELECT ID FROM BIZ_COM_PERIODS WHERE
START_DATE < TO_DATE('01/01/2009', 'mm/dd/yyyy') )
AND f.OBJECT_ID = i.ID
Happy New Year of the Rabbit!
-Connie