Ledger And Journal

The journals your finalised invoices, receipts, payments and stock adjustments post land here automatically, beside the manual journals your accountants key for accruals, adjustments and opening balances. Each company needs a primary ledger before any journal can be created, and Error Checking is where to look for unbalanced journals and documents that never produced one.

Overview

The Ledger And Journal applet is where the General Ledger lives. Every document that reaches FINAL elsewhere — sales invoices, purchase invoices, receipts, payments, stock adjustments — writes a journal here automatically (AUTO), and accountants key their own adjustments, accruals and opening balances as manual journals (MANUAL). The applet also maintains the ledgers (primary and secondary books per company), the sub-ledgers (the account-level detail under each GL code), a bulk journal importer, and an Error Checking workspace that finds unbalanced journals, documents with no journal, and missing forex or card-charge entries.

A short introduction:

Where it fits

Module: Financial Accounting.

Screens and menus

Journal Transaction

Listing columns: Journal No (tenant running number), Journal No By Company (company running number), Running No. (built by the screen as company code − year and month − the tenant Journal No, for example GS-2603-104512; it is not the company running number), Document Type and Document No (the source document — INTERNAL_SALES_INVOICE, INTERNAL_PAYMENT_VOUCHER …), Branch, Entity, Status, Posting.

Create Journal Transaction opens a two-part form:

Two captures that sat here were withdrawn: both carried a tenant’s own registered company legal name — one on every row of the journal listing, one in the Company field of the create form. Recaptures from a synthetic demo tenant will replace them.

• Main — Company, Ledger, Currency, Transaction Date, Reference Number, Description, Server Doc Type / Server Doc No (filled automatically for AUTO journals; on a manual journal, clicking Server Doc No opens a document picker that links your journal to that document — see the caution under Error Checking).
• Lines — one row per account affected: Branch, GL Code, Cashbook (optional), Entity (optional), Amount Debit or Amount Credit, Description, and on the Categories sub-tab Segment, Dimension, Project and Profit Center.

The Create button stays disabled until Company, Currency, Ledger and Transaction Date are filled, at least one line exists, total debits equal total credits, and the total is not zero — hovering the button lists which condition is unmet.

View Journal Transaction shows Main, Line Items and Export tabs. Actions: CLONE (creates and saves a copy at once; there is no draft, so the copy is in the ledger before you open it. Change its date and amounts straight away. It is the usual way to reverse or repeat an entry; swap the debit and credit amounts to reverse) UPDATE (saves your edits to a manual journal in place; greyed out until debits equal credits) and, on the listing, a VOID button for the ticked manual journals — despite the label, a soft delete rather than a reversal (see Lifecycle and effects).

Sub Ledger

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

A sub-ledger is the account-level record under a GL code: one per customer, supplier, cashbook, fixed asset, expense account and so on. The listing shows Name, GL Code, GL Section, GL Category and Account No; the view has two tabs: Main (only Description and Remarks are editable — Company, Ledger, Name and GL Code are fixed once created) and Journal Lines (every posted line hitting this sub-ledger, with the balance brought-down and carried-down rows; lines from voided documents are always left out). Ticking several sub-ledgers on the listing opens a multi-view with Details, Details 2 — which replaces the brought-down and carried-down rows with one Opening Balance As At row — and Count.

Two captures that sat here were withdrawn: one carried a tenant’s registered company legal name in the Company field, the other a tenant identifier beside a year of that tenant’s month-end balances. Recaptures from a synthetic demo tenant will replace them.

Sub-ledgers are created automatically: automatic posting and manual journal creation both create a sub-ledger for a GL code (or for a cashbook) if none exists yet in that company and ledger. If a sub-ledger is mapped to the wrong GL code and already has transactions, create a new one under the right code and transfer the balance by journal.

Ledger

Two captures that sat here were withdrawn: one repeated a tenant’s registered company legal name on every row, the other carried a tenant identifier in the sidebar beside a ledger named after the same tenant. Recaptures from a synthetic demo tenant will replace them.

A ledger is a book of accounts for a company: PRM (Primary — statutory reporting in base currency), SEC (Secondary — an alternative view such as another currency or standard) or CONSOLIDATED. Fields: Ledger Code, Ledger Name, Currency, Ledger Type. The primary ledger is protected; only secondary ledgers can be deleted. A company must have a primary ledger before any journal — automatic or manual — can be created; the backend refuses otherwise. You do not create it here: the Ledger screen has no create button, and BigLedger creates the primary ledger (code and name PRIMARY) at the moment the company itself is created in the Organisation applet.

Import Journal

Download the sample MasterData_Upload_Ledger_&_Journal.csv, fill one row per journal line and upload it; the listing shows each file’s Process Status (VALIDATING_DATA, DONE, FAILED). Columns: COMPANY_CODE, HDR_BRANCH_CODE, LEDGER_CODE, REFERENCE_NUMBER, CURRENCY_CODE, HDR_DESCRIPTION, DATE_TXN, LINE_BRANCH_CODE, LINE_GL_CODE, LINE_CASHBOOK_CODE, LINE_ENTITY_CODE, LINE_AMOUNT_DEBIT, LINE_AMOUNT_CREDIT, LINE_DESCRIPTION. Rows that share the same reference number, company and transaction date form one journal — the other header columns (branch, ledger, currency, description) are taken from the first row of the group, so two rows with the same reference and date but different header branches still become one journal. Each journal must balance. A single row with a bad code fails the whole file before any journal is written; once the rows pass, a journal group the server refuses is skipped while the others post, and the file ends FAILED — so a FAILED file may have posted most of its journals. Check the listing before re-uploading, or you will post the good ones twice. Imported journals post at once, like keyed ones, and the listing shows them as MANUAL — but the listing’s Type search finds them under neither MANUAL nor AUTO, so leave Type empty (or tick both) when you look for them.

Error Checking

A month-end journal on Journal Not Balance is a real imbalance

It is not the close at work. Month End Processing writes, in one request, the cost-of-goods-sold journal where the company has its defaults, then AUTO CREATED FROM RETAINED EARNINGS PROCESSING, which moves the month’s profit or loss to retained earnings, and only then the pair described AUTO CREATED FROM MONTH END PROCESSING. So each half of the pair balances on its own:

• The closing journal, on the last day of the month, carries every account’s balance down. It mirrors the ledger, so it nets to zero when every journal in the month does and every GL code belongs to a report section.
• The opening journal, on the 1st of the next month, carries only the balance-sheet accounts forward. It nets to zero because the month’s result already sits on retained earnings.

Since July 2026 every journal must balance when saved, month-end journals included, so a close that would write an unbalanced one is refused while the screen still reports success. A month-end journal listed here comes from an older close, or is rounding.

The check, and it takes a minute. Note the journal’s date and the size of the difference:

• Under one ringgit — rounding between a journal’s stored totals and its lines, or the fraction of a sen the balance check allows. Harmless, and nothing on the screen will let you correct it.
• One ringgit or more — a close from before the check. An opening journal out by about that month’s profit or loss means no retained-earnings journal was written: the company had no PROFIT_LOSS or RETAINED_EARNING default GL code. A closing journal out by another amount means a journal in the month did not balance, or a GL code had no report section. Raise it with support before you post anything: a manual correction to a month-end journal is carried down again next close, and re-processing that month refuses any half that still does not balance.

Configuration

Before you can use it

Applet settings

Settings (gear icon) → System Configuration: Application Settings, Default Selection, Printable Format Settings, plus Webhook, Feature Visibility, the permission screens, Release Notes and Applet Log. Personalization holds a per-user Default Selection and Sidebar.

Application Settings

Default Selection

The applet-wide screen offers company, ledger and currency only — there is no default branch here, and nothing on a new journal’s header is ever pre-filled with a branch. A journal line’s branch picker does fill itself from a personal default branch when the line has none, but this applet’s own Personalisation → Default Selection screen, which shows a Default Branch picker, neither loads nor stores what you pick. In practice every line starts without a branch, and the header’s branch is not copied down to the lines — pick it on each line.

Printable Format Settings

Create a format (Format Code, Format Name) for the journal voucher printout used by the Export tab and batch print. PRINTABLE stores the default.

Document behaviour settings

Not configurable in this applet beyond the two Application Settings above: there is no approval workflow and no posting-status flow on manual journals. The period lock is not set here either — it is the fiscal period status in Chart of Account: creating a manual journal dated into a LOCK_GL or LOCK_ALL period is refused, while AUTO journals still post. The check covers create only. Clone creates its copy in the locked month; an edit can move an existing journal’s date into one; and VOID on the listing, deleting a line in View, Import Journal and Missing Journal’s Create all change a locked month without being stopped. Locking a period here therefore protects it from new keyed journals, not from these — if a closed month’s balances moved, look for one of them first.

Feature visibility / permissions

Server-side access is through the journal API permissions targeted by company and branch, managed in the permission screens under Settings.

Fields

Journal — Main

Journal — Line

Each line’s Description and its four reporting categories (Segment, Dimension, Project and Profit Center, on the Categories sub-tab) are optional and stored exactly as entered; the Add Line form copies none of them from the header, so a header description does not become the line’s.

Ledger

Ledger Code, Ledger Name, Currency, Ledger Type (PRM / SEC / CONSOLIDATED); type and code are fixed after creation for the primary ledger.

Sub Ledger

Name, GL Code, Company, Ledger (fixed); Description, Remarks (editable).

Lifecycle and effects

Journals are not documents with a DRAFT/FINAL flow. What happens is:

Balances shown in the Ledger, Sub Ledger and Financial Report applets are derived from ACTIVE journal lines; month-end processing adds a closing-day (CD) and an opening-day (BD) journal per ledger — and, on every Create and PROCESS, a COGS journal when the company has COGS and STOCK_BALANCE defaults and a RETAINED_EARNINGS journal when it has PROFIT_LOSS and RETAINED_EARNING — and writes the monthly per-account summaries the Financial Report reads.

Related applets

• Chart of Account Applet — defines the GL codes and the default GL mappings automatic posting depends on.
• Financial Report — reports on the balances this applet holds, by Set of Books and ledger.
• Organisation Applet — companies, branches and the primary ledger.
• Cashbook Applet and Bank Reconciliation — cashbooks, and the reconciliation of the cashbook transaction lines that vouchers and cash transfers create (a manual journal creates none).
• Purchase Invoice (Internal), Sales Invoice (Internal), Receipt Voucher (Internal), Payment Voucher (Internal) — the main sources of AUTO journals.
• Fixed Asset — writes acquisition, adjustment and disposal journals directly from its Transactions tab; its depreciation run writes nothing from the screens you are served (RUN does nothing, checked 2026-10-07), and in a newer build, not yet served, it writes AUTO journal headers that carry no lines, so depreciation is posted as a manual journal here.

Troubleshooting

Related documentation

• Journal entries guide
• Chart of accounts setup
• Financial reporting guide
• Financial Accounting module