Reviewing a Set of Books Kept in BigLedger

Somebody has to be able to say the accounts are right, and to show why. That person may be your external auditor, your tax agent, the company secretary signing the directors’ report, or you, the finance manager, making sure the others find nothing. By the end of this guide you will have run a year-end review of a set of books kept in BigLedger: the proofs that the figures hold together, the checks BigLedger does not do for you, and a list of exceptions with a name against each one. Allow a day for the first pass. The month-end version takes about two hours.

BigLedger is very good at one half of this. Every document that reaches FINAL writes its own journal, so the ledger agrees with the documents by construction. The other half is the reviewer’s job and always was: deciding whether what was recorded is complete, dated in the right period, valued honestly and supported. No software does that half. This guide says which half each check belongs to.

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere is a group of three companies: GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd (GS, 22 retail branches), GadgetSphere Online Sdn Bhd (GSO) and GadgetSphere Distribution Sdn Bhd (GSD, wholesale to corporate customers). Their financial year ends on 31 December 2026. The external auditors arrive in February 2027, and the finance manager wants every question they will ask answered before they do. The examples below use GS, with the group question in Step 6.

What a set of accounts claims, and who answers for each claim

When GS publishes its accounts, it is making five claims. Each one belongs to somebody, and each has a test. BigLedger holds the evidence for most of them. It does not hold the judgement for any of them.

The claim	Who answers for it	Where the evidence is in BigLedger	The test (step below)
The assets exist. The cash is in the bank, the stock is on the shelves, the customers really owe it	The finance manager, and the directors who sign	Bank Reconciliation reports, the stock count, the Debtor Report aging	Steps 2 and 7
The liabilities are complete. Every supplier bill and accrual that belongs to the year is in the year	The finance manager	Creditor Report, goods received but not yet invoiced, the manual journals list	Steps 3 and 4
Each figure is in the right period (cut-off)	The accounts team, checked by the finance manager	The transaction date on every document and journal	Step 3
The figures are this company’s own, not another group company’s, and nothing is counted twice	The group finance manager	The Set of Books and the company on each document	Step 6
The values are honest. Doubtful debts are provided for, assets are depreciated	The finance manager, approved by a director	The manual journals that post them, because no document does	Step 4

If a claim has nobody’s name against it at GS, that is your first finding. It will not appear in any report.

Before you start

You can open the Financial Report, Ledger and Journal, Debtor Report, Creditor Report and Bank Reconciliation applets for every company you are reviewing. Read access is enough for everything in this guide. An auditor should be given read access only. Step 5 of Who May Change the Books explains why.
Month End Processing has been run for every month of the year, in date order, after the last posting. If it has not, the Trial Balance you are about to read is a photograph taken before the last changes. See Which figures BigLedger stores, and which it works out fresh.
You have the bank statements for 31 December, the stock count sheets and the supplier statements the finance team received in January.

Step 1: Prove the trial balance, then look for a constant difference

The outcome: you know the books balance, or you know by how much and why they do not.

Finance > Financial Report > Financial Report > (the FY 2026 snapshot) > Trial Balance

Read the footer. Total debits must equal total credits to the cent. Do this before you look at the Balance Sheet. The Trial Balance is the one report that lists every account’s debits and credits side by side, so it is the proof. The Balance Sheet is a summary built on top of it.

If the trial balance is out, look at the difference month by month. A difference that appears in one month and then stays exactly the same in every month after it points to one cause first: an opening balance keyed on a profit-and-loss account. When BigLedger closes a month, it writes an opening journal for the next month, and that journal carries forward only balance-sheet accounts. Profit-and-loss accounts start every period from zero, which is correct. So an amount somebody keyed as an “opening balance” on a sales or expense account never reaches the next month’s opening, and every later month is short by exactly that amount. It will not heal on its own.

The test takes one look. On the opening balance you were migrated with (Master Data > Chart of Account > (company) > Ledgers > the primary ledger > Opening Balance), the opening balances across every account must add up to zero, and not one of them may sit on a profit-and-loss account. Last year’s result belongs inside retained earnings (EQUITY-RETAINED) before the first day of the new year.

The fix is the preparer’s job, not the reviewer’s: move the amount from the profit-and-loss account into retained earnings, then re-run Month End Processing for every month from that one forward, in date order. The reviewer’s job is to confirm it was done, by reading the footer again.

How you know you got it right: the footer balances for every month of the year, not only December.

Step 2: Tie every sub-ledger to its control account

The outcome: each balance-sheet total that has a detailed list behind it agrees with that list, or every difference has a named reason.

This is the heart of the review, and BigLedger does not do it for you. The customer aging is built from documents. The receivables control account on the Balance Sheet is built from journals. They are two separate records of the same money, and there is no screen that compares them document by document. So the comparison is a person’s job, done every month before the month is locked, and repeated at the year end for the auditors.

Tie-out	Left side	Right side	Where a difference comes from
Receivables	Debtor Report > Aging Report, all customers, as at 31 December	`DEBTOR-TRADE-RETAIL` and the other receivable control accounts on the Trial Balance	A manual journal posted straight to the control account (an opening correction, a write-off done by journal, a rounding entry). It moves the ledger and can never appear on the aging, because there is no document to age
Payables	Creditor Report > Aging Report, as at 31 December	`LIAB-SUPPLIER-TRADE`	The same, plus a supplier document keyed against the wrong group company
Bank	The bank statement closing balance	Bank Reconciliation Report 1 for `CASH-PRI-KV01`, variance line	Items not yet presented, items not yet recorded, items recorded twice, or an error
Cashbook to ledger	Cashbook > Cash Level	The cashbook’s GL code on the Trial Balance	A manual journal to the bank GL code: it moves the ledger and writes no cashbook line
Output tax	The SST return for the last taxable period	`LIAB-SST-OUTPUT`	A document changed after the return was filed. The return is a frozen copy and the ledger is live

Record each tie-out on one sheet: both figures, the difference, and a line for each reconciling item with its document or journal reference. That sheet is what the auditor will ask for.

When one will not come out, stop. Quantify the difference, write down what you have ruled out, and hand it to the finance manager with a date. Do not post a balancing journal to make it agree. A plug hides the error in a place nobody will look, and next year’s reviewer inherits a difference that nobody can explain. An unexplained RM 1,240 on the receivables tie-out, documented and escalated, is a finding. The same RM 1,240 plugged to sundry expenses is a concealed one.

How you know you got it right: every line of the tie-out sheet reads zero, or carries a reference that the finance manager has initialled.

Step 3: Test the cut-off

The outcome: sales, purchases and costs for the year are in the year, and nothing from January 2027 has leaked back.

BigLedger puts every document in the period of its transaction date. It does not compare that date with anything else, such as the delivery date or the date the supplier’s bill arrived. Deciding which period an event belongs to is the accounts team’s job. Testing that they decided correctly is yours.

Finance > Debtor Report > AR Transaction, then the same on the Creditor Report, for 24 December 2026 to 10 January 2027.

Three situations to look for:

Goods delivered on 31 December and invoiced on 2 January. The sale belongs to December. If GSD’s corporate delivery went out on the 31st and the invoice is dated 2 January, December’s revenue and receivables are understated. The accounts team either dates the invoice 31 December (if December is still open) or accrues the sale by journal in December and reverses it in January.
A supplier’s bill that arrives in January for goods received in December. If the goods came in on a Purchase GRN Stock In, the goods-received accrual was posted in December when the GRN was finalised, so the liability is already in the year. If they came in on a plain GRN, which posts nothing, the liability is missing from December until somebody accrues it.
A void in January of a December document. The reversing journal carries the original December date. Voiding a December invoice in January changes December, even if December’s statements have already gone to the auditors.

For a late supplier bill there are three honest choices, and the finance manager makes the choice, not the clerk: post it in December if December is still open, accrue it by journal in December and let the bill post in January, or post it in January and record why the amount is too small to matter. Each is defensible. Silently dating it into whichever month is open is not.

How you know you got it right: every document in your window over RM 5,000 has been read against its delivery note or goods received note, and the period it sits in matches the period of the event.

Step 4: Check the entries that no document raises

The outcome: every adjustment the year needs is posted, authorised and supported.

Nothing in BigLedger posts an entry that the calendar causes rather than a document. Depreciation, accruals, prepayments, provisions for doubtful debts and year-end bonuses all appear in the ledger only if a person keys them as a manual journal. The depreciation run in the Fixed Asset applet currently writes journals with no lines (Financial Accounting Module), so depreciation is a manual journal too.

Finance > Ledger and Journal > Journal Transaction, with the Type column showing MANUAL, for the year.

For GS, the list should include twelve depreciation journals, the month-end accruals, and the year-end provisions. For each one, read the description and ask for the support: the calculation, the invoice, the approval. A manual journal with no description, or one described only as “adjustment”, is a finding.

A provision is not a write-off, and the difference shows in the aging.

A write-off says the debt is gone. It is done with a credit note on the customer’s account, so the customer’s balance and the aging both fall. It is approved by the finance manager before it is posted.
A provision says the debt may not be collected. It is a journal to an allowance account (for example DEBTOR-ALLOWANCE), and it leaves the customer’s balance and the aging untouched, because the customer still owes the money and you are still chasing it.

Post a provision to its own allowance account, never to DEBTOR-TRADE-RETAIL itself. A journal straight to the control account is exactly the difference Step 2 finds, and next year’s reviewer will spend a morning finding it again.

How you know you got it right: every manual journal over RM 5,000 has a description, a supporting document and the name of whoever approved it, written down outside BigLedger if nowhere else.

Step 5: Confirm the year’s result reached retained earnings

The outcome: the profit for 2026 is inside equity, and 2027 opens with every profit-and-loss account at zero.

Every time Month End Processing runs, BigLedger posts one journal that moves the period’s result from the company’s profit-and-loss account to its retained-earnings account, the two accounts named on the company’s Default GL Codes. There is no separate year-end button. The twelfth month is closed the same way as the other eleven.

So the check is arithmetic, not a screen: retained earnings at 31 December 2026 = retained earnings at 1 January 2026 + the year’s profit − any dividends declared. Take the first figure from the Balance Sheet, the second from last year’s audited accounts, the third from the Profit and Loss for the year.

If the arithmetic is out by the result of one month, that month’s Month End Processing was run before its last postings. Re-run it and every month after it, in order.

How you know you got it right: the sum works to the cent, and January 2027’s opening Trial Balance shows no balance on any sales, cost or expense account.

Step 6: Reconcile the group companies with each other

The outcome: what GS says GSD owes it equals what GSD says it owes GS, and you know what must be removed before anyone adds the three companies together.

A Set of Books that spans several companies adds their ledgers together and eliminates nothing (Setting Up a Group). A sale from GSD to GS is revenue in one and a cost in the other, and both are in the total. BigLedger has no consolidated group statement. Consolidation is done outside it, by the group finance manager.

So before any group figure is published:

Take the intercompany receivable in each company and the matching payable in the other, as at 31 December.
They must agree. When they do not, look first for timing (GSD invoiced on the 31st, GS received the goods on 2 January) and for a document keyed against the wrong company.
Agree the difference between the two finance teams before the year end is signed, not after. When they cannot agree it by the deadline, the same rule as Step 2 applies: quantify it, document it, escalate it. Neither side plugs it.
List the intercompany sales, purchases, balances and dividends that the consolidation must eliminate.

How you know you got it right: the intercompany balances agree to the cent between each pair of companies, and the elimination list adds up to the intercompany totals on both sides.

Step 7: Trace a sample, in both directions

The outcome: you can show the auditor that a figure in the accounts comes from a real event, and that a real event made it into the accounts.

From the ledger to the event. Pick 25 lines from the sales and receivables accounts. An automatic journal carries its Document Type and reference, so you can open the invoice, receipt or credit note behind it. Finance > Financial Report > Error Checking > Trace Document checks one named document for the journal, cashbook line and reversal it should have produced. A manual journal has no document behind it. Its support is whatever the finance team filed, which is why Step 4 matters.

From the event to the ledger. Pick 25 delivery notes, goods received notes and bank statement lines from the year, and find each one in BigLedger. This is the direction that tests completeness. A sale that was never invoiced will never show up in a sample drawn from the ledger.

How you know you got it right: all 50 items trace, or each one that does not is on your exception list with a reason.

The four questions to ask of any set of accounts

These questions matter to the owner reading the accounts as much as to the auditor, and none of them is answered by a report on its own.

Question	Where to start in BigLedger	What only a person can decide
Is the cash real?	Bank Reconciliation Report 3 for every cashbook at 31 December	Whether an item that is still unmatched after three months is a timing difference or an error
Are the receivables collectable?	Debtor Report > Aging, the over-90-days bucket	Which of those customers will actually pay, and so how much to provide (Step 4)
Is the stock saleable?	The stock count, and stock with no movement in six months	Whether last year’s models are still worth what they cost. The stock figure in the books is what the stock cost, and whether it is still worth that is a judgement
What is not on here at all?	Nothing. That is the point of the question	Commitments, guarantees, legal claims, intercompany balances not yet eliminated, and any depreciation or accrual nobody keyed

Recognising a control failure in the evidence

A reviewer does not only check numbers. You also notice when the process that produced them was skipped. In BigLedger evidence, these are the signs, and each one needs an owner:

A bank reconciliation with a variance, or no session at all for a month. The bank was not proved. Owner: the finance manager.
Manual journals to a control account (receivables, payables, bank, output tax). Each one is a difference between the ledger and the sub-ledger that somebody created on purpose. Owner: whoever keyed it, to explain it.
A journal dated in a month whose statements were already issued. The Journal Transaction listing can show Transaction Date beside Created Date, Created By, Updated Date and Updated By (switch the columns on). Sort by transaction date for December and read the created dates: a December-dated entry created in February moved December after the fact. Owner: the finance manager, who either approved it or did not know.
A period set back to open after it was locked. Owner: the person who reopened it. Who May Change the Books explains why this needs a record kept outside BigLedger.
The same person raising and paying a supplier. Owner: whoever assigns permissions.

Write each one down with a name and a date for an answer. A control failure with no owner is still open when the next auditor arrives.

What success looks like

In 30 seconds: open your review file and check that it holds (1) a trial balance that balances for every month, (2) a tie-out sheet for receivables, payables, every bank account, cashbook to ledger and output tax, every line zero or explained, (3) a list of manual journals over your threshold with support and approver, (4) the retained-earnings arithmetic, (5) agreed intercompany balances and an elimination list, and (6) an exception list with a name and a date on every row. If all six are there, your close pack is complete, and it is what the auditors will ask for first.

Common mistakes

Mistake	What you see	What to do instead
Reading the Balance Sheet first	A balance sheet that is nearly right, and days spent looking in the wrong report	Prove the Trial Balance first (Step 1)
Reviewing a snapshot taken before the last postings	Figures that disagree with the ledger you drill into	Confirm Month End Processing ran after the last posting for every month, then regenerate the snapshot
Plugging a tie-out difference	A tie-out that agrees this year and an unexplained balance on a sundry account next year	Quantify, document and escalate (Step 2)
Sampling only from the ledger	A clean sample and an incomplete ledger	Sample from delivery notes, goods received notes and bank lines too (Step 7)
Treating the group total as consolidated	Group revenue overstated by every intercompany sale	Reconcile and eliminate outside BigLedger (Step 6)