Financial Report

Close each month and read your statements here. Know this first: a Trial Balance, Profit and Loss or Balance Sheet snapshot reads only the months Month End Processing has closed — an empty report almost always means the months were never processed, not that the journals are missing.

Overview

The Financial Report applet is where the accountant closes a month and reads the statements. It has four working screens: Month End Processing closes one month for one Set of Books (it writes the closing-day and opening-day journals and the per-account balance summary the reports are built from); Financial Report freezes a Trial Balance, Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and MITRS view for a range of closed months; Profit Loss Report is an ad-hoc P&L straight from posted journals, grouped by branch, GL dimension, segment, profit centre or project; and Error Checking holds two diagnostic tools — the Stock Flow Report (inventory value versus accounting value per module) and Trace Document (whether a named document produced the journal, cash book line, reversal and shadow document it should have, with a Resolve button on each one that is missing).

Video walkthrough

Where it fits

Screens and menus

The applet menu has four entries: Financial Report, Month End Processing, Profit Loss Report and Error Checking. (A fifth, MEP, is routed but hidden from the menu.)

Financial Report

The listing shows one row per snapshot: Set of Book, Start Date, End Date, Created/Updated By and Date. Tick several rows and click Reports to open a side-by-side comparison with Trial Balance, Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet tabs — the normal way to compare periods or Sets of Books.

+ opens the create form: choose a Set of Books and a Start Year / Start Month / End Year / End Month, then Create. The snapshot is built immediately.

Screenshot withdrawn; a recapture from a demo tenant is on the list.

Opening a snapshot shows five tabs:

Two measures on one Trial Balance — by design. The screen decides the measure per section: the profit-and-loss sections (SalesRevenue through TaxExpenses, and ProfitLoss) show what moved between the start and end month, and every other section shows the balance at the end month. That is the trial balance an accountant expects for a period — the period’s result beside the balance sheet as it stands — and it is intended. Two consequences to know before you foot it. Dividend is treated as profit-and-loss by the close but is not on the screen’s list, so a dividend account shows its end-month balance only, and on a range longer than one month the debit and credit totals do not agree. And an account whose section is not one of the codes the Profit And Loss or Balance Sheet tabs know appears on the Trial Balance and on neither statement.

Two buttons sit above the tabs. REPORT opens a grid of the journal lines behind every account on the selected statement, read live from the journals for the snapshot’s dates — so after a back-dated posting it disagrees with the frozen figures on the tab until you re-close and regenerate. REGENERATE throws away the snapshot’s lines and rebuilds them from the current month-end summaries — the header (Set of Books and range) is kept.

Clicking a line drills down: GL listing (Date, Doc Type, Doc No, Entity, Reference, Description, Journal Ledger, Debit, Credit) → journal view (Main, Line Items, Gross Profit) → document view (Main, Line Items, Posting).

Month End Processing

The listing shows one row per processed month (Set of Book, Start Date, End Date, audit columns). + opens a three-field form — Set of Books, Year, Month — and Create runs the processing straight away for every ledger in that Set of Books.

Opening a record shows Main (the three fields plus DELETE) and Processor, which has a single row — Month End Processing with a PROCESS button. PROCESS re-runs the close for that month: it deletes the previous closing/opening journals and summary rows and rebuilds them, which is how back-dated postings get picked up. Months chain to each other: each close reads the opening journal the previous month’s close wrote on the 1st, so a month’s closing balances include everything before it. Re-processing March changes the opening of April, and April’s close — and every later closed month’s balance-sheet figures — are stale until you PROCESS each of them again, in order. Then REGENERATE the Financial Report snapshots that include those months. For the same reason, the first month you ever close must be the first month your books have entries in, or every balance before it is missing from the chain.

Profit Loss Report

An ad-hoc statement built from posted journals at query time — no month-end needed. Filters: Group By (Branch, GL Dimension, Segment, Profit Center, Project — default Branch), Branch (multi-select, narrowed in the browser to the branches your Financial Report read permission names), GL Dimension, Profit Center, Segment, Project, Date From / Date To (required), and Cost Type (MA, WA, FIFO, LIFO, Replacement, Manual). SEARCH renders one amount column per group value with the subtotal rows Net Sales, Total Cost of Goods Sold, GROSS PROFIT/(LOSS), GROSS MARGIN, PROFIT BEFORE TAXES, NET PROFIT/(LOSS) and PROFIT MARGIN.

Clicking an amount opens the journal lines behind it; clicking the cost-of-goods-sold amount opens a Gross Profit listing by document (Doc Type, Doc No, Date, Entity, Item Code, Item Name, Qty, UOM, Unit Price, Unit Cost, Amount Txn, Amount Tax, Amount Net, Cost Amt, GP, GP%).

What this report asks the server, and the four ways its total surprises you

Worth reading before anyone compares its figures against a Financial Report snapshot or a trial balance, because all four differences are by construction and none of them is visible on the screen.

1. It reports the values you ticked, and nothing else. The report is limited to exactly the values you ticked, and SEARCH stays disabled until you have ticked at least one. There is no “all branches” run. Leave one branch unticked and its revenue and its cost are simply not in any column and not in any subtotal — so the report footing to a company profit and loss is something you arrange by ticking everything, never something it does for you.

2. A journal line with no tag on the chosen dimension is dropped entirely. A line whose branch, profit centre, segment, GL dimension or project is blank matches no column and disappears. Nothing requires a branch on a manual journal line — the line form asks only for a GL code and the backend never checks it (Ledger and Journal) — so an untagged adjusting entry is invisible here while still sitting in the trial balance. This is the usual reason a branch profit and loss is short by exactly one accrual.

3. One dimension at a time, chosen by the first non-empty list. The server groups by the first of branch, GL dimension, profit centre, segment, project that has values in the request. The screen can only ever send one, because Group By switches which picker is shown. An integration asking for the report through the API with two lists filled gets the server’s order, not the one the screen implies, and the second dimension is discarded silently. There is no cross-tab: branch and profit centre in one grid is not something this report does.

4. The cost-of-goods-sold row is not your cost-of-sales journal. The revenue and expense half reads journal lines (ordinary TXN journals only, so closing, brought-down, opening-balance and acquisition journals are excluded), and the screen then drops every line whose GL category is coded purchases or purchases returns, so a periodic-inventory purchases account is not counted beside the computed cost — by that code only: a purchases category coded differently is counted twice; the cost half is a second calculation over document lines — the goods lines of FINAL sales invoices, cash bills and sales returns — using whichever of the six stored costs your Cost Type names. That is why this screen shows a cost of sales before month-end has journalled one, and why its figure can differ from the snapshot’s: they are two different measurements of the same month, not the same number twice.

The report multiplies the stored unit cost, and never reads the stored cost amount — on purpose. The cost amount columns on a document line do not hold the cost of that line. The stock-balance step writes the running balance onto each line, so a line’s moving-average cost amount is the value of that item’s whole company stock after the movement, and its moving-average price is the new average unit cost. FIFO is the same shape, except that FIFO also keeps this movement’s own cost, which is what the report uses for it. That is why the report multiplies the stored unit cost by the line quantity instead.

Three of the six Cost Types read a column nothing writes. The report multiplies each line’s quantity by one stored unit cost, and only three of those costs are ever filled on a document line. Moving average and weighted average are written back by the stock-balance step of the posting chain, and FIFO by the FIFO step after it (Costing Internals). LIFO and Manual are written by nothing — LIFO is not computed, and nothing fills a manual cost — so those two stay empty on the line. Replacement is the odd one: it is filled, but by the pricing subsystem rather than by costing — a line that names a pricing scheme link has the link’s replacement price copied into it on every save. So picking LIFO or Manual gives you a Total Cost of Goods Sold of zero, a gross margin of 100%, and no message; picking Replacement gives you a figure built from list prices, not from cost.

Do not expect a branch-targeted permission to narrow this report. When a user’s Financial Report grant carries a company, branch or location target, the server compares the request with it and refuses the whole report if either the branch or the company comparison comes up empty — and the screen never sends a company, so a targeted user gets not authorised rather than a narrowed report. Without a target, nothing on the server limits which branches a user may tick: the picker in the browser is the only limit. Treat the multi-select as a convenience, not as a control — and do not set a branch target on a Financial Report permission expecting it to narrow this report, because it would refuse the report outright instead.

Error Checking

Two tabs (a third, Cashbook Discrepancy, is present in code but commented out of the screen):

• Stock Flow Report — pick a Company and a date range. One row per module — Purchases, Purchase Returns, Sales, Sales Returns, Purchase Consignment, Reset MA — with Inventory (the total of the finalised document lines of that module’s types — purchase amounts on Purchases, selling amounts on Sales), Accounting (the journal lines on the module’s default sub-ledger) and Difference. It checks that documents and their journals agree. It reads neither stock value nor the stock account: the Opening Stock row is always zero and there is no Closing Stock row. For stock against the stock account, see Stock report versus the stock account on the balance sheet. Clicking a Difference opens a per-document listing (Date, Doc Type, Doc No, Amount Inv, Amount Acc, Status) where Status is OK, MISSING_ACCOUNTING, MISSING_INVENTORY or WRONG_AMOUNT; CREATE posts the missing journal or reposts the wrong one for the selected rows and writes the result (POSTED or the server error) back into the Status column.
• Trace Document — pick a Server Doc Type and type the Server Doc No, then TRACE. The screen shows the document’s date, amount, posting status, posting journal and posting running number, and runs six checks: Missing Journal and Wrong Journal and Missing Cashbook and Missing Shadow Document (for FINAL documents), Missing Reversal Journal and Missing Reversal Queue (for VOID documents). Each failed check has a Resolve button that creates or reposts the missing artefact. A Repost button appears beside Posting Journal when the document is already POSTED and is not linked to a base or forex-shadow document. It has no document-type list, unlike the checks, and needs journal create, admin or owner permission. Repost deletes the document’s journal and builds it again from the document; Repost successful confirms it, and a failure shows nothing (see A failed Repost under Troubleshooting). If the document has a linked base or forex-shadow document, its number is a link to that document.

Settings and personalisation

Settings > System Configuration has Field Settings and Default Selection, plus the standard permission, webhook, release-notes and applet-log screens. Personalization > Default Selection lets each user set their own Default Branch and Default Location.

Configuration

Before you can use it

Applet settings

Settings > System Configuration > Default Selection (saved as the applet’s master settings):

Settings > System Configuration > Field Settings is the applet’s own hide/show screen with eight switches — Lines: Unit Discount, SST/VAT/GST, WHT, Blanket Order; Department: Segment, G/L Dimension, Profit Center, Project (all off, except Unit Discount, which shows on until the screen is first saved). They are saved, but no screen in this applet reads them — the Profit Loss Report’s dimension filters stay visible whatever you set. Treat the screen as inert.

Document behaviour settings

Not configurable in this applet. What month-end posts, which cost basis values stock and which accounts the processors hit are all fixed by the company’s Default GL Codes, its Inventory Closing Base On, the report-section links, and the engine (see Lifecycle and effects). There is no approval flow, no printable template selection and no e-Invoice involvement.

Feature visibility / permissions

No client-side permission definitions are seeded for this applet in the registry, so nothing in the UI is hidden per role. Access is enforced by the backend permission family API_TNT_DM_ERP_FI_FINANCIAL_REPORT_{OWNER, ADMIN, MEMBER, CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE, READ}:

The Profit Loss Report’s Branch picker lists the branches your API_TNT_DM_ERP_FI_FINANCIAL_REPORT_READ grant allows. The server then checks the search against the targets of the CREATE grant, and only when that grant carries targets. It wants both a permitted branch and a permitted company, and the screen never sends a company. So any branch or company target on the CREATE grant refuses every search, rather than narrowing it. Grant CREATE without targets. The Set of Books and its ledgers are also read with permission checks, so a user without read rights on a ledger cannot close it.

Fields

Financial Report — Main

Saved as a financial report snapshot; each line records the GL section, category, code, total debit and total credit, plus branch / entity / profit centre / segment / project / dimension / sub-ledger.

Month End Processing — Main

Stored on the same header table with txn_type = MONTH_END_PROCESSING.

Profit Loss Report — filters

Stock Flow Report and Trace Document

Lifecycle and effects

Neither a snapshot nor a month-end record has a status flow; they are created, regenerated and deleted. What matters is what each action writes to the ledger.

Creating (or re-processing) a Month End Processing record

For each ledger in the Set of Books:

1. Delete that ledger’s existing CD journal for the month, its BD journal dated the first of the next month, and its summary rows for the month. This runs before, and outside, the step that rebuilds them.
2. Read every journal line dated within the month whose journal is not itself a CD — including the BD opening journal the previous month’s close wrote on the 1st — grouped by sub-ledger and GL code, with the GL code’s report section. The month’s first and last instants are worked out by your browser when you create the record and stored on it; PROCESS reuses them.
3. Post a closing-day (CD) journal dated the last day of the month: one line per account, opposite in sign to the account’s net movement (P&L lines are described POSTING TO PROFIT AND LOSS). Transaction type CD, description AUTO CREATED FROM MONTH END PROCESSING, marked automatic and posted, with posting running numbers.
4. Post an opening-day (BD) journal dated the first day of the next month that re-opens the balance-sheet accounts only — lines in the P&L sections listed under Before you can use it are skipped.
5. Write one general ledger summary row per sub-ledger + GL code for the month: net debit or credit, opening (BD) amount, closing (CD) amount, and the year/month keys.

DELETE on a month-end record removes the CD and BD journals and the summary rows for every ledger in the Set of Books; it does not touch the original document journals — and it leaves the month’s cost-of-goods-sold and retained-earnings journals posted. Undoing a close does not undo the cost of sales or the profit transfer; delete or reverse those yourself in Ledger And Journal if you mean to.

Cost-of-goods-sold and retained-earnings processors

These two steps run on every month-end, not on demand: both Create and the Processor tab’s PROCESS write the cost-of-goods-sold and retained-earnings journals before the close. Because the close then reads every non-CD journal line of the month, both journals are inside the CD close and the summary rows. What you cannot do is run either on its own — the Processor tab has no button for it. Each journal is written only when its company defaults exist (COGS: COGS + STOCK_BALANCE; retained earnings: PROFIT_LOSS + RETAINED_EARNING) — otherwise the step is skipped silently:

Closing stock for the COGS processor is valued from stock transactions before the period end (PNS and RESET_MA rows, latest per item) using the cost column chosen by the company’s Inventory Closing Base On — quantity × unit cost for MA, WA, FIFO and LIFO, the stored amount for Replacement and Manual. The pick does not skip deleted stock lines, so an item whose latest movement was deleted is valued from that deleted line. A Month End Closing Stock record for the month or the prior month overrides opening and closing inventory when its manual flag is set and the manual value is not zero. A manual zero is ignored and the calculated figure stands, so a company whose stock really is nil still has the calculated stock taken off cost of sales. Re-running a processor first deletes the journals it created last time.

Creating and regenerating a Financial Report snapshot

Creating a snapshot reads three sets of summary rows for the Set of Books’ ledgers and stores them as fact lines: the monthly rows from start month to end month (the profit-and-loss movement), the end month’s closing amounts (the Balance Sheet, and the Trial Balance’s balance-sheet accounts), and the end month’s opening amount for the RetainedEarnings section — stored, but read by no tab. Rows whose debit equals credit are dropped. REGENERATE deletes the fact lines and repeats the read with the same header. DELETE removes the snapshot only. Nothing here posts to the ledger.

Reading order at month-end

1. Post and finalise all documents and manual journals for the month.
2. Create (or PROCESS) the Month End Processing record for each Set of Books — months in order, never one ahead of an unclosed earlier month.
3. Check the closing and opening journals exist for every ledger (see A failed close still says success above).
4. Create the Financial Report snapshot, or REGENERATE existing ones that include the month.
5. If anything is back-dated later: PROCESS that month and every later closed month, in order, then REGENERATE.

Related applets

• Chart of Account — owns everything this applet depends on: sections, categories, the section links, Sets of Books, ledgers, companies’ default GL codes and inventory closing basis, and the MITRS flag.
• Ledger And Journal — where you see the CD, BD, COGS and RETAINED_EARNINGS journals month-end writes, and where the drill-down from a report line ends up.
• Organisation — branches, profit centres, segments and projects used as Group By dimensions in the Profit Loss Report.
• Sales Invoice (Internal), Sales Return (Internal) — source of the live cost-of-goods-sold and Gross Profit listing.
• Purchase Invoice (Internal), Purchase Return (Internal) — the purchase side of the Stock Flow Report and the COGS processor.
• Stock Report — Historical Stock Balance, the figure to tie to the stock account after Month End Processing (how). The Stock Flow Report does not read it.
• Cashbook, Receipt Voucher (Internal), Payment Voucher (Internal) — settlement documents whose cashbook transactions Trace Document verifies.
• Debtor Report, Creditor Report — sub-ledger detail behind the receivable and payable lines.

Troubleshooting

Related documentation

• Financial reporting guide — the month-end and snapshot walkthrough for the running example.
• Month-end closing tutorial
• Financial Accounting module
• Chart of Account applet — sections, categories, Sets of Books, default GL codes.