Who May Change the Books: Review, Lock and Correct

Who may change the books: review the week's journals, prove a locked month did not move, and correct with evidence

Steps 3 to 5 of deciding who may change the books: review the week’s manual journals, prove each locked month did not move, and correct a posted entry so the evidence survives. It follows Step 2, where the roles were set. The running example is GadgetSphere’s finance team of six, whose auditors have asked who can post a journal, who can delete one and who can reopen December. Nothing in finance routes for approval, so these reviews are the control, and owners and administrators pass every journal, GL code and fiscal-year check BigLedger makes: what they post is read by somebody who is not one (Two things to know first).

Step 3: review the week’s manual journals, every week.
Step 4: know what a locked period stops, and prove it did not move.
Step 5: correct a posted entry so the evidence survives.

Step 3: Review the week’s manual journals, every week

The outcome: every manual journal has been read by somebody other than the person who keyed it, within a week of it being posted.

Finance > Ledger and Journal > Journal Transaction

Switch on the Type, Created Date, Created By, Updated Date and Updated By columns. The listing is ordered by updated date, so the most recently touched journals are at the top. For each manual journal created or updated since last Friday, check four things:

Description and support. Every one says what it is for, and the calculation or document behind it is filed.
Account. Nothing posted by journal to a receivables, payables, bank or output-tax control account without a reason on file. Those accounts have a document-based list behind them, and a journal there opens a difference between the two (Reviewing a Set of Books, Step 2).
Date. The transaction date is in an open month. A journal created this week and dated into a month you have already reported on changes that month.
Who. The creator is not you. If it is, the senior accountant reviews that one.

Then two checks the manual journals alone would miss:

Automatic journals updated this week. For any automatic journal whose Updated Date falls in the week, open the document behind it (the Doc No column) and confirm the journal still agrees with it. If it does not, the document is the one to correct (Step 5).
Last week’s sheet, carried forward. Record each journal’s Journal No on the sheet. Look each of last week’s journals up on the listing again. The listing shows active journals only, so a journal that has gone was deleted since you reviewed it. Ask who deleted it and why, and write the answer on the sheet.

How you know you got it right: the weekly sheet lists every manual journal from the listing with initials against it, the count on the sheet matches the count on the listing, and every journal on last week’s sheet is either still on the listing or has a written reason for its deletion. The review cannot see a journal that was keyed and deleted between two Fridays. Such a journal changed no figure, but it leaves no trace. For a journal dated in a month you have locked, the Step 4 comparison of the saved journal list is the backstop.

Step 4: Know what a locked period stops, and prove it did not move

The outcome: you know exactly what the lock guarantees, and you have a check that catches everything it does not.

Master Data > Chart of Account > Fiscal Year > (the year) > Fiscal Period

In the occupation’s language, a closed period means no further movement without authority. In BigLedger it means less than that, and it is safer to know exactly how much less:

The lock is checked when a manual journal is created (lock GL or lock all) and when a document is finalised (lock transactions or lock all).
Journals written by documents still post into a period locked for GL only. The lock stops people keying journals, not documents posting.
An existing journal can be edited, deleted, or cloned into a locked month. None of those paths checks the lock.
Anyone who can update the fiscal year can set a period back to open, with no approval, and set it locked again afterwards.

None of this makes the lock useless. It stops the ordinary mistake, which is a clerk keying this week’s journal into last month. It does not stop a person with the rights to do otherwise, so the control is who holds those rights (Step 1), plus a check that the month did not move.

The check, for every locked month, at the next month-end:

At the lock, save the month’s journal list. Filter the Journal Transaction listing to transaction dates in the month, load every row until the number loaded matches the total on the status bar, and export it into the close pack. Note the month’s net profit beside it.
Run the ad-hoc Profit Loss Report (Finance > Financial Report > Profit Loss Report) for the locked month. It reads the posted journals as they are now, not the stored month-end summary. Compare its result with the close pack.
Filter the Journal Transaction listing to transaction dates in the locked month and read the Created Date and Updated Date columns. Anything later than your lock date moved a closed month: a new journal, an edit, or the reversing journal of a void.
Export the same list again and compare it with the one you saved, by Journal No. The listing shows active journals only, so a journal that is in the saved list and missing from today’s was deleted after the lock. This is the comparison that sees the deletion of a journal that touched only balance-sheet accounts, which the Profit Loss comparison cannot. Each one needs a written reason.
Keep a reopen log outside BigLedger: who reopened which month, when, why, what they posted, and when it was re-locked.

The finance manager runs the check, or the senior accountant if the finance manager holds owner or administrator rank.

If the month did move, legitimately, re-run Month End Processing for that month and every month after it, in date order, then regenerate every Financial Report snapshot that includes those months. Each month’s opening balance is built from the month before, so a gap anywhere carries forward. If statements for that month have already gone to the bank, the auditors or the tax agent, they must be re-issued, and whoever received them told what changed and why.

How you know you got it right: for every locked month, the live Profit Loss result equals the close pack figure, every journal in the list saved at the lock is still on the listing, and every journal created, updated or missing since the lock date is in the reopen log with a reason.

Step 5: Correct a posted entry so the evidence survives

The outcome: every correction leaves both the mistake and its fix on the record, so a reviewer can see what happened.

There are three ways to correct a posted entry. They are not equally good:

Route	In BigLedger	What a reviewer can still see
Reverse	Open the journal, CLONE it, swap every debit and credit, then post the correct entry	The original, the reversal and the correction, all on the listing. The pair nets to zero and tells its own story. Use this by default
Adjust	Post a new journal for the difference only	The original and the adjustment. Clear, as long as the description says what it adjusts
Amend or delete	Edit the journal, or delete it from the listing	Only the result. A deleted journal and its lines are marked deleted and drop out of every balance, and no reversing entry is written. The listing no longer shows a pair a reviewer can read

Deleting is fine for a journal you keyed a minute ago that nobody has reported on. After that, reverse.

How you know a correction kept its evidence. Whoever keys the reversal writes the original’s Journal No in its description. In the Friday review (Step 3) the finance manager reads each reversal beside its original, and both must be on the listing. A correction that left only one journal behind was an amendment or a deletion. An amendment shows as an Updated Date later than the Created Date on the Friday review; a deletion shows as a journal missing from the carried-forward sheet or from the list saved at the lock (Step 4). A journal that a document wrote is corrected through the document: a credit note against the invoice, or a void. Do not edit the journal, because the document and its journal would then permanently disagree. That is why the Allow user to edit auto posted journal setting belongs off.

The auditor’s year-end adjustments

The auditor proposes the adjustments. The auditor does not post them. Give the audit team read access only, for the duration of the audit. The adjustments are posted by the finance manager or the senior accountant, like this:

Which period. The last month of the financial year, so that the audited accounts and the books agree. For GS that is December 2026, which is locked, so it is reopened for the purpose and the reopening goes in the log.
How. One manual journal per adjustment. The description quotes the auditor’s adjustment number (for example “Audit adj 4 — FY2026 bonus accrual”), and the auditor’s schedule is filed as its support.
Then. Re-run Month End Processing for December and for every later month already processed, in date order, regenerate the snapshots, and re-lock December.
The record. The adjustment journals, the auditor’s schedule and the reopen log entry go into the year-end close pack.

How you know you got it right: the Trial Balance for December 2026 agrees with the audited trial balance line by line, and every difference between the draft and the final accounts is an adjustment journal with the auditor’s number in its description.

What success looks like for this part

A weekly sheet for every Friday, with initials against every manual journal, a count that matches the listing, every automatic journal updated that week checked against its document, and every journal on the week before’s sheet found again or explained; for every locked month, the journal list saved at the lock, a live Profit Loss result equal to the close pack figure, and every journal created, updated or missing since the lock in the reopen log with a reason; and every correction since the last review left its original on the listing beside either its reversal or an adjustment whose description says what it adjusts. Then run the whole task’s success check.

Common mistakes in this part

The mistakes are listed together on the front page. Three belong here: trusting the lock, deleting a journal that has been reported on, and letting the auditor post.