Month-End: Prove It Agrees

Prove the month agrees before you lock it

This page is for the accountant who has run Month End Processing and is about to lock the month. The close made the statements; it did not prove them. BigLedger keeps each balance-sheet total and the list behind it as two separate records, and compares neither pair for you. So before you lock, you prove five things. Allow a morning per company the first time.

The five proofs, at a glance. Do them after Stage 5 and before Stage 7:

Account for goods received and not yet billed.
Agree receivables to the aging.
Agree payables to the aging, and to the suppliers’ own statements.
Agree the stock account to the stock report.
Decide on foreign-currency revaluation, which BigLedger does not do.

Meet GadgetSphere

You are closing March 2026 for GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd (GS) on the third working day of April. GS receives at its 22 branches on a GRN Stock In, so goods sell the day they land. GSD receives on a plain GRN. Some laptops are bought in US dollars. One sheet per company holds every figure below, and the finance manager initials it before the lock.

Any journal you post while doing this changes March. An accrual, a re-coded document or a correction dated in March is not on March’s statements until you PROCESS March again, then every later closed month in order, and REGENERATE the snapshot (the fixed order). Re-read the proofs it touched before the finance manager initials the sheet.

Two records of the same money

The control account is the one figure on the Trial Balance for a whole population: DEBTOR-TRADE-RETAIL for what customers owe, LIAB-SUPPLIER-TRADE for what you owe suppliers, INV-STOCK-CONTROL for stock. The sub-ledger is the list behind it: the aging, the stock report. Journals build the first, and documents or the stock ledger build the second. Anything that reaches one record without the other opens a gap, and BigLedger gives no warning. A tie-out is finding that gap and naming every part of it. It is not posting a journal to close it.

Before you start

Month End Processing has run for March, and its journals are there (Stage 5). Every tie-out reads the Trial Balance it wrote.
The monthly aging snapshot ran on 1 April. If the historical reports have no rows for March, the clock did not fire. Do not press Run Now to fill it, because a late run stores today’s balances as March’s (the monthly automation check).
Received-not-invoiced goods have accounts of their own (INV-NOT-INVOICED, LIAB-GRIR), not stock or trade creditors (Chart of Accounts Wiring). If they share a code, Step 1 has nothing to read.

Step 1: Account for goods received and not yet billed

The outcome: every delivery that arrived in March without its bill is a liability on March’s balance sheet, and you can name each one.

Financial Report › the March snapshot › Trial Balance › LIAB-GRIR, then click the line to drill down

On a GRN Stock In (GS), BigLedger writes the accrual for you (the receiving pair). Finalising the receipt debits INV-NOT-INVOICED and input tax, and credits LIAB-GRIR for the total. A Purchase Invoice No Stock In that knocks the receipt off reverses LIAB-GRIR by the invoice’s total. So at month end, LIAB-GRIR should hold only receipts still waiting for a bill. Read INV-NOT-INVOICED beside it: the invoice clears it by a total that includes tax, so a credit left there is tax, and the purchasing page says which document should carry it. The drill-down lists each line with its Doc No and supplier. Pair each receipt’s credit with its invoice’s debit; what is left is one of three kinds:

What is left on `LIAB-GRIR`	What it is	What to do
A receipt with no invoice debit	A delivery still waiting for its bill. This is the accrual, and it is correct	Ask the buyer whether a bill is expected. A receipt older than the supplier’s billing cycle may be a short delivery or a lost bill
A balance on a receipt that was invoiced	Part of the delivery is still unbilled (correct), or the invoice’s total differs from the receipt’s: price, tax, a discount or a return	Find which. A difference also sits, reversed, on `INV-NOT-INVOICED`; clear both with one approved journal naming both documents
An invoice debit with no receipt	A No Stock In invoice knocked off a purchase order or a plain GRN, reversing an accrual never made	Void that invoice where permitted, then re-key the bill as an ordinary purchase invoice

It also moves March’s cost of sales. The goods are in March’s closing stock, and reach the Purchase account only with the invoice, so March’s cost of sales is low by their value and April’s high. At GS that is RM 612,000. Decide whether March must stand on its own: The goods you received but were not billed for.

Goods received on a plain GRN

On a plain GRN (GSD), BigLedger writes nothing, so you do it. The receipt posts no stock and no journal, so until the invoice comes the goods are absent from the ledger. The accountant does the job instead, on the last working day of the month, before April’s invoices are keyed:

Read GRN quantity in Stock Availability, item by item. These are the units received against a GRN and not yet invoiced, as they stand now. It is not a month-end figure, so take it on the day and keep the export.
Value them at the purchase-order price.
Missed the day? In the Purchase Report, April’s invoices whose GRN No is a March GRN were waiting at 31 March.
Post an accrual journal dated 31 March: debit INV-NOT-INVOICED, credit LIAB-GRIR. Reverse it with a journal dated 1 April.

Do not debit the purchases account. The close counts every line there as a purchase, and these goods are not in closing stock, so it would add them to March’s cost of sales as if sold.

The finance manager sets the threshold below which nothing is accrued; write it on the sheet.

30-second check: LIAB-GRIR on the Trial Balance equals your waiting-for-bill receipts plus every other line you listed from the table. For GSD, the accrual journal exists and its reversal is dated 1 April.

Step 2: Agree receivables to the aging

The outcome: what customers owe, by document, adds up to the receivable control accounts.

Debtor Report › Historical Transaction Aging Analysis Report, As Of Date March 2026, Company GS

Use this report, not the Aging Report. The Aging Report and the Outstanding Document Report show balances as of today. By the third working day, April’s receipts have already reduced them. The historical reports read the snapshot the monthly clock takes on 1 April (01:00 as installed): each open document’s balance as it stood when the clock ran (what each report reads). Of the two, take the transaction aging. It lists each document once and converts a foreign-currency invoice at its own rate. The Historical Debtor Report adds a dollar balance to ringgit unconverted, and counts a customer once per group company it is linked to (why).

Compare its total with every receivable control account on the Trial Balance. The report covers trade, other and merchant receivables together, so at GS you add DEBTOR-TRADE-RETAIL and DEBTOR-CC-RETAIL.

Expect two kinds of difference, and name each one on the sheet:

A journal keyed straight to a control account. It moves the ledger and has no document to age. Drill into the control account. Every line with no document type is one of these (finding them line by line).
A document dated March and finalised after the snapshot. Once you have re-processed March, it is in the Trial Balance. It is not in the snapshot, unless your tenant has the back-dated aging step (BigLedger support can tell you). Find it in Ledger and Journal’s Journal Transaction listing: a March transaction date with an April created date. List its document number.

When a difference will not come out, quantify it and escalate it. Do not plug it. The year-end tie-out page explains why.

30-second check: the report’s total, plus or minus the listed items, equals the receivable control accounts to the sen.

Step 3: Agree payables to the aging, and to the suppliers

The outcome: what you owe suppliers agrees with the payable control accounts, and with what the suppliers say you owe.

Creditor Report › Historical Transaction Aging Analysis Report, As Of Date March 2026, Company GS

Do the same as Step 2, against every payable control account the report’s suppliers post to (at GS, LIAB-SUPPLIER-TRADE), with one extra trap. A GRN Stock In appears on the creditor reports as an open supplier document. In most companies’ data it keeps its own balance after the invoice that knocks it off is keyed, so the report can count a delivery once as the receipt and again as the invoice. The ledger holds the receipt on LIAB-GRIR, not on trade creditors, and Step 1 has already accounted for it. So take the GRN Stock In rows (short code PURGRNSI) out of the report’s total before you compare.

The Creditor Report can also drop them for you: Field Settings › Document Types to Exclude (settings). That setting is the applet’s, for every user, and it also removes them from supplier statements. Agree it with whoever sends statements first.

Then agree the big suppliers’ own statements. Each month, the payables clerk takes the statements from the ten largest suppliers. Compare each one with that supplier’s Statement of Account in the Creditor Report. A bill on their statement and not on yours is either goods received (it belongs on Step 1’s list) or a bill you have not received (ask for it). A payment on yours and not on theirs is money in transit. You are done when every difference has a reason.

30-second check: the report’s total without GRN Stock Ins, plus or minus listed items, equals the payable control accounts.

Step 4: Agree the stock account to the stock report

The outcome: INV-STOCK-CONTROL equals closing stock, or differs by causes you have named.

Stock Report › Historical Stock Balance, Date As 31 March, every location, no item filter

The close moves the stock account by the change in closing stock. It never resets the account to your stock, so a difference that gets in stays in. The two agree only when six conditions hold:

Only the close’s own journals reach the stock account.
Every back-dated month was processed again, in order.
The report covers every location and item.
It uses the close’s cost column.
Both read the same kinds of ledger line.
No manual closing value, or you know what it left out.

What breaks each condition, how to see it, and a worked RM 450,000 gap are in Stock report versus the stock account.

A manual closing value keyed in Step 1 leaves the stock account below the report by about the received-not-invoiced value, on purpose. Tie that gap to INV-NOT-INVOICED.

30-second check: the stock account minus Historical Stock Balance is zero, or it is the total of the causes on your sheet.

Step 5: Decide on foreign-currency revaluation

The outcome: the foreign-currency balances on March’s balance sheet are at the rate your reporting requires, and the decision is written down.

BigLedger does not revalue. A US-dollar bill stays in ringgit at the rate on the document until it is paid. Then the payment posts the realised gain or loss (Forex). No month-end run restates open balances at the closing rate. Whether your reporting framework requires closing-rate translation at this date, and whether the amount is material, is for your external accountant or finance manager. BigLedger does not decide it. If they revalue:

List the open US-dollar bills at 31 March: Creditor Report › Historical Transaction Aging Analysis Report, As Of Date March 2026, Currency USD. Add any other foreign-currency balance your accountant holds, such as a dollar bank account.
For each one, compare its ringgit balance at its own document rate with the same dollar amount at the 31 March rate. Post the total difference as an unrealised gain or loss, in a journal dated 31 March.
Reverse that journal on 1 April, so the realised figure at payment is not counted twice.
Post it to a separate adjustment account, not to LIAB-SUPPLIER-TRADE. The aging stays at document rates, so a revaluation on the control account is one more unexplained line on Step 3.

Customers billed in foreign currency get the same treatment, against the receivable side.

30-second check: the sheet shows either “not revalued” with the reason, or the journal number and its reversal.

What success looks like

Open the sheet for GS. Each of the five lines shows two figures, a difference, and a reference for every part of that difference. The finance manager has initialled it, and only then is March set to LOCK_TXN. Do the same for GSO and GSD. At the April close, check that March’s Trial Balance has not moved.

Common mistakes

Mistake	What you see	What to do instead
Tying receivables to the Aging Report on the 3rd	A difference about the size of April’s collections	Use the Historical Debtor Report for March
Leaving GRN Stock Ins on the payables aging	The aging runs ahead of trade creditors by roughly every delivery received this way	Exclude the type in the Creditor Report’s Field Settings
Posting a journal to make a tie-out agree	Agreement this month, and an unexplained balance on a sundry account next year	Name the difference, and escalate what you cannot explain
Accruing a plain GRN to the purchases account	March’s cost of sales high by the accrual	Debit `INV-NOT-INVOICED` instead
Revaluing into the control account	A gap between the aging and the ledger at every month end you revalue	Use a separate adjustment account, reversed on the 1st