Finance
These applets are where you key the money that comes in and goes out, close the month, read your profit and loss and balance sheet, and check the books against your cash, your customers and the tax return. Most entries in your ledger are not keyed here at all. Your sales, cash bills and inventory documents write their own, through the backend, after the fact. This page says which applets write to your books and which only read them or keep their own records, where each figure comes from, and where to look when two of them do not agree. Each page listed at the foot of this one is the reference for one applet; the Financial Accounting module explains the whole machinery.
Which applets write to your ledger, and which read it
| Applet | Who opens it | Open it when | What it writes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Receipt Voucher (Internal) | Accounts-receivable clerk | Money arrives from a customer | At FINAL, the cashbook transaction (the line Bank Reconciliation matches) and the debtor journal. The contra against the invoice is what clears the customer’s balance |
| Payment Voucher (Internal) | Accounts-payable clerk | Money leaves: a supplier bill, an expense paid directly, a refund | One cashbook transaction per payment line, and the creditor journal |
| Reimbursement Payment Voucher (Internal) | Whoever pays staff claims | You pay a person back for money they spent on the company’s behalf | The cashbook transaction and a journal, but no payee balance. An expense line that carries SST or withholding tax leaves the entry unbalanced, and then no journal is written at all |
| Purchase Invoice (Internal) | Accounts-payable clerk | A supplier’s bill arrives | The creditor, purchase and input-tax journal, and the stock-in. It is the only document that writes an item’s last purchase cost |
| Ledger And Journal | Accountant | You key an accrual, an adjustment or an opening balance, or look for a finalised document with no journal | A manual journal is posted the moment you create it. There is no draft |
| Financial Report | Accountant who closes the month | Month end, and every time you read the financial reports | Month End Processing writes the closing, opening, cost-of-sales and retained-earnings journals, and the monthly summary the statements are built from |
| Fixed Asset | Whoever owns the fixed-asset ledger | You capitalise, adjust or dispose of an asset | Journals written directly from its Transactions tab. On the build served today (checked 2026-10-07), RUN on a depreciation run does nothing, so depreciation is a manual journal |
The rest read the ledger or the documents, or keep a register of their own:
| Applet | Open it when | What it writes |
|---|---|---|
| Bank Reconciliation | You prove a cashbook against the bank for a period | Reconciliation links, and nothing in the ledger |
| Debtor Report, Creditor Report | Credit control, supplier balances, aging, a statement for one customer or supplier | A contra between two open documents, and an exchange-difference journal when the two were at different exchange rates |
| Debtor and Creditor Report | One team reviews both sides | Nothing, not even a contra |
| Statement of Account | You send statements to many customers at once | Its own runs. An e-mail run you create sends nothing until somebody presses EMAIL ALL or EMAIL SELECTED |
| MY-SST | Your company files an SST-02 | A frozen copy of each filed document’s taxed lines. It calculates no tax and writes no journal |
| Deposit | Company cash is placed with a bank for a fixed term | Its own register. The interest it schedules does not reach the ledger today |
| Budgetary | You set up budget control | Budget registers, which finalised purchase and sales invoices consume, where the budget posting jobs are wired for your tenant |
| Cashflow Projection | You plan what you expect to bill and collect | Its own register. It reads no invoice, receipt or journal |
| Dynamic Report | You need a cut of the data no fixed report gives | Its own reports and result sets. Its SQL is read-only |
What happens when you press Finalise
Finalise is its own step, not a save. It queues a follow-on job, and that job reads your company’s default GL codes and writes the journal. The cashbook line for a settlement is written the same way. Finalise itself checks no GL code. So a document whose company has no default GL code for, say, its supplier type is finalised without complaint, and its journal is never written. The screen does not tell you. You find out later, from a report that is missing it. What actually happens when I press Finalise? walks the whole chain.
Two places show you what did not happen:
- Financial Report › Error Checking › Trace Document runs its checks on one document: journal, cashbook line, reversal, and the company-currency copy of a foreign-currency document. Press Resolve on a missing step. If the cause is still there, Resolve shows you the backend’s own reason.
- Ledger And Journal › Error Checking › Missing Journal lists finalised documents of a type you choose that were never marked as posted. A document whose journal was removed with VOID is not on it. A refused rebuild here shows a code at most, sometimes no message at all.
Both rebuild by deleting first. Re-posting from Missing Journal, or pressing Repost in Trace Document, deletes the document’s existing journal and only then tries to build the new one. If the build is refused, the old journal is already gone. Fix the default GL code before you press it, and open the document’s Journal Txn grid afterwards.
Once the journal and the cashbook line exist, the other finance applets can see the document. From there you can match the receipt in Bank Reconciliation, apply it to the invoice so that the invoice leaves the aging, and carry the month into the financial reports at the next month end. In practice each writing applet is paired with one that proves it: receipts and payments with Bank Reconciliation, the month’s postings with Month End Processing and a regenerated snapshot, the customer documents with the aging.
Where a finance figure comes from
Most figures you report on were worked out once and stored. Most figures you drill into are worked out the moment you open the screen. When the two disagree, it is usually because something was posted after the stored one was taken.
| The figure | What it reads | When it is taken |
|---|---|---|
| Trial Balance, Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet (Financial Report snapshot) | One summary row per account per month, written by Month End Processing | When somebody runs Month End Processing for that month and Set of Books, then creates or regenerates the snapshot. Nothing runs it for you |
| Ledger, Sub Ledger, the ad-hoc Profit Loss Report | Journal lines (the Profit Loss Report’s cost of sales reads document lines) | Live, every time you open it |
| Debtor and creditor aging, outstanding documents | Each finalised document’s own balance | Live. The historical aging reads a month-end copy taken on the 1st by a scheduled job, where that job is switched on for your tenant |
| Bank reconciliation | Cashbook lines from finalised vouchers, point-of-sale settlements and cash transfers | Live lines under a stored header balance |
| SST-02 | The copy of each document’s taxed lines written when you filed it | At filing |
Three consequences follow, and each one is a support call that did not need to happen:
- The aging and the Balance Sheet’s receivables line read different things. The aging is built from documents, the Balance Sheet from journals. A manual journal posted straight at the debtor control account (a write-off, an opening correction) is in one and can never be in the other.
- A manual journal against the bank’s GL code never reaches Bank Reconciliation. Bank charges and interest have to go in as a voucher or a cash transfer to be reconcilable.
- A document edited after it was filed for SST changes the SST reports and not the return. The SST-02 reads the filed copy.
Which figures BigLedger stores, and which it works out fresh has the full list and the rebuild order.
Why a closed month stops agreeing with the ledger
It is the 9th of April. GadgetSphere closed March last week and finished its bank reconciliation. This morning a supplier invoice dated 24 March arrives, a branch reports a sale keyed to the wrong date, and somebody voids a cash transfer from mid-March. You post all three. By the afternoon the questions are “the financial report and the ledger don’t agree” and “the bank reconciliation was tallied and now it isn’t.”
Nothing is broken. The ledger moved and the March summary did not. Open the Month End Processing record for March, press PROCESS, then do the same for every later month you have closed, in order, because each month starts from the one before. Then REGENERATE the snapshots. A void counts too: voiding in April a document dated in March moves March.
The same shape, slower, catches a business that started on BigLedger in the middle of its year. If the trial balance is out by the same amount every month from go-live onwards, look at the opening balance first. An amount keyed as an opening balance on a sales or expense account is dropped at the first month end, because only balance-sheet accounts carry forward. Last year’s result belongs in retained earnings before day one. Reviewing the books has the one-look test.
What must exist before any of it posts
| Set this up | In | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| The company’s Default GL Codes, for every document type and customer or supplier type you use | Chart of Account | A missing customer or supplier code: documents finalise with no journal, and Trace Document shows Missing Journal. A missing sales, purchase or tax code fails nothing: that line is left out of the journal and the customer’s or supplier’s line absorbs it |
| Every GL category linked to a report section | Chart of Account | The account has movement in the ledger and is missing from every financial report |
The PROFIT_LOSS and RETAINED_EARNING default codes | Chart of Account | Month End Processing reports success, and the month’s result is never moved to retained earnings. The Balance Sheet is out by roughly the period’s profit |
| Each settlement method linked to a cashbook that has a GL code | Cashbook | A receipt or payment finalises with no journal. With no cashbook it has no cashbook line either, so it is missing from Bank Reconciliation until you repair it with Resolve in Trace Document |
| A primary ledger for each company | Created with the company in Organisation | Manual journals are refused. A company without one was made some other way; Ledger And Journal says what to do |
One wrong setting reaches every module. A missing default GL code is not a finance problem only. A missing receivable or payable code leaves every sales or purchase document that needs it, from every branch of the company, Final with no journal. A missing sales, purchase or tax code is quieter still: the journal posts, balanced, with that line folded into the customer’s or supplier’s line, so the revenue, cost or tax account is short and nothing looks wrong.
When two applets seem to do the same job
Debtor Report or Debtor and Creditor Report. The combined applet carries both sides in one menu and writes nothing. Use the single-sided Debtor Report or Creditor Report when you need your own aging periods, excluded document types, or to apply an unapplied receipt to an invoice by contra.
Statement of Account, or the statement tab in Debtor Report. The Debtor Report gives you one customer’s statement on screen. The Statement of Account applet makes one for each customer in the categories, or with the sales agents, you choose, across a set of companies, and prints or e-mails them as a batch.
Payment Voucher or Reimbursement Payment Voucher. Pay a supplier’s bills, an expense or a refund with the Payment Voucher. Pay back a member of staff with the Reimbursement voucher, which raises no payee balance. Its posting has not yet been used in production, so read the journal of your first one before you rely on it.
Profit Loss Report or the Financial Report snapshot. The snapshot is your statutory figure, frozen at month end. The Profit Loss Report is live, and splits profit by branch, profit centre, segment or project. Its cost of sales is recomputed from each sale line’s stored cost at the cost basis you pick, so expect it to differ from the snapshot. Use it for the margin conversation, not for the accounts.
Purchase Invoice, or a goods receipt that books the stock. In the standard pair the invoice moves the stock and the goods receipt posts nothing. If you need stock on the books when it arrives and the bill later, use Purchase GRN Stock In with Purchase Invoice No Stock In.
Dynamic Report or a fixed report. Dynamic Report answers a question no fixed report asks, from a
SELECT you write. Only its own dashboards read its results, so it is a place to look, not a figure to post from.
When something looks wrong
| What you see | Usual cause | Where it is fixed |
|---|---|---|
| A document is Final and has no journal | The posting job failed after Finalise, usually on a missing default GL code | Map the code, then Resolve in Trace Document |
| The Trial Balance is empty | Month End Processing has not been run for the months in the range | Run it for each month, then REGENERATE |
| Month End Processing said success and a report is short or out of balance | A category with no report-section link, or no PROFIT_LOSS / RETAINED_EARNING default code. The screen is not told | Look for the two AUTO CREATED FROM MONTH END PROCESSING journals per ledger (how) |
| A back-dated journal is not in the snapshot | The snapshot and the summary are frozen | PROCESS that month and every later closed month in order, then REGENERATE |
| The aging total and the Balance Sheet’s debtors line differ by a fixed amount | A manual journal at the control account, which the aging cannot see | The Trial Balance doesn’t agree with the ledger |
| A receipt is missing from Bank Reconciliation | Not FINAL, its settlement method points at another cashbook, or it is dated after the session’s closing date | Bank Reconciliation |
| A receipt is FINAL and posted, and the invoice is still outstanding | The contra request failed after Finalise, and nothing retries it | The receipt’s Contra tab (why) |
| A branch’s profit and loss is short by one adjusting entry | The manual journal line was saved with no branch, so it matches no branch | Set the branch on the line in Ledger And Journal |
| The SST Report and the SST-02 disagree | The reports read live documents, the return reads the filed copy | Find the document changed after filing. Read MY-SST on duplicate rows before you unfile and re-file it |
When none of these is yours, When two numbers don’t tally starts from the symptom.
What none of these applets will do, and who does it instead
- Close the month. Nothing runs Month End Processing for you. The accountant runs it for each Set of Books, months in order, after the month’s last posting, and checks the two closing journals per ledger. They know it is done when the Trial Balance footer balances for every month, not only the last.
- Depreciate an asset. On the Fixed Asset screens served today, the depreciation run does nothing. Whoever owns the fixed-asset ledger posts each month’s depreciation as a manual journal in Ledger And Journal, from the schedule, and ties accumulated depreciation to the register at year end.
- Put deposit interest in your accounts. The Deposit applet’s interest schedule posts nothing. At each month end, finance accrues it by manual journal; the cash itself arrives on the receipt voucher linked to the deposit.
- Calculate SST. The tax is on each document line, from its tax code. MY-SST only decides which filed lines land in which return. Export the SST-02 PDF before you lock a cycle, because a locked cycle’s Part A is blank, and check the cycle’s filed transactions after every void.
- Tie the sub-ledgers to the control accounts. The aging and the Balance Sheet are built from different records, so somebody has to tie them. The receivables and payables clerks do it in the first days of the next month, listing each manual journal at the control account as a reconciling item, and the finance manager initials the sheet. Reviewing the books gives the procedure.
Verify that a finalised document reached your books
This takes a minute. Run it after any change to default GL codes, cashbooks or settlement methods.
- Finalise one receipt voucher, for example RM 1,000 from a corporate customer of GadgetSphere Distribution, paid by online transfer.
- Open its Trace Document tab. The Journal Txn grid and the Cashbook Txn grid should both show the receipt’s entries. Both are written by follow-on jobs, so give them a moment.
- In Bank Reconciliation, open the session for that cashbook that covers the receipt’s date. The RM 1,000 line should be there, waiting to be matched.
An empty Journal Txn grid means the posting failed. On a receipt the usual causes are a settlement method with no cashbook, a cashbook with no GL code, or a missing default GL code, and Resolve in Trace Document names which. An empty Cashbook Txn grid means the settlement method has no cashbook.
Where to go next
Every page in this section