The settlement price will be determined on the settlement date of a particular contract. Calculated based on the expiration date (options) or the last trading day (futures), the closing liquidation price is the reference price for the options that expire and for the final payment of the variation margin of the futures. Basically, the liquidation price is important because futures accounts are marked to go public every day. This means that profits and losses are offset and credited or debited to traders' accounts at diary.
Of course, this reduces the risk of counterparty default. The closing price is usually considered the last price traded within trading hours and the liquidation price is the official contract price used to mark traders' market accounts. There is no standard price acceptable to everyone, so the settlement price may vary for the same contract depending on the calculation method, the period considered and other factors. Although the closing price is biased towards the closing price, in the case of indices it is a weighted average of the prices of the transactions that take place in the last hour of the day (and in the case of individual values, it is simply the closing price).
For example, closing prices at the beginning and end of a given period are compared to determine the performance of stocks during that period. Many publications print a single price for the opening or closing of the market, regardless of whether there was a range, with operations at several prices. While opening and closing prices are often treated the same way from one exchange to another, there is no protocol on how to evaluate liquidation prices in different markets, which results in variations in global markets. All contracts of each member are adjusted to the market price (MTM) at the daily settlement price of the corresponding futures contract at the end of every day.