Troubleshooting

Something is not working and you want it working. This page is the list of things that actually go wrong in BigLedger, in the order they come up, with the real messages and the real fix.

Two diagnostic screens are named at the bottom that most people never find. If you are stuck on a posting problem, skip straight to them.

Start here: which kind of problem is it?

“It will not save or finalise” — there is a message. Read it; it names the thing. Jump to Documents that will not finalise.
“It saved but nothing happened” — almost always a draft, or a document type that does not post. Jump to Nothing happened.
“I cannot find it” — almost always a default filter. Jump to Things you cannot find.
“The number is wrong” — jump to Numbers that look wrong.
“The button is not there” — jump to Missing buttons, menus and applets.

Documents that will not finalise

“Company Default GL Code…” / a message naming a missing GL code

What you see: the finalise fails, naming a mapping it could not find — MISSING_DEFAULT_GL_CODE or COMPANY_DEFAULT_GL_CODE_NOT_EXIST.

What is happening: BigLedger builds the journal from your company’s default GL codes and looks them up at the moment you finalise, not when you create the document. One of them is not set.

Fix: in the Chart of Account applet, complete the company default GL code mapping — for the company this document belongs to. In a group with several companies this is usually the second or third company, where nobody finished the setup. Nothing is lost in the meantime; the document stays a draft.

“Customer is blacklisted due to credit limit…”

What you see: “Customer is blacklisted due to credit limit. Transactions are not allowed for this customer.” — or the credit-term wording, or both together.

What is happening: a scheduled job compares each customer’s outstanding balance against their credit limit and their overdue terms, and flags the ones that fail. The block reads that flag. It is not recalculated as you type, so it reflects the position at the last run of the job.

It applies to four document types and no others: cash bill, sales invoice, sales order and outbound delivery order.

Fix: clear the flag on the customer record — and find out why the job flagged them, because the flag is usually right. Note that a flag set by hand does not survive the next run of the job; if you want a permanent stop on a customer, set their credit limit rather than their flag.

“MISSING_CASHBOOK” or “MISSING_GL_CODE” on a receipt or payment

What is happening: a settlement line’s method has no cashbook behind it, or that cashbook has no GL code.

Fix: map the settlement method to a cashbook with a GL code in the Cashbook applet. This is configuration, not something you can work around on the document.

Serial, batch or bin quantities do not match the line

What you see: the finalise is refused and the offending line is marked, naming the item.

Fix: complete the Serial Number, Batches or Bin sub-tab on that line so the allocated quantity equals the line quantity. If a delivery genuinely arrived short, change the line quantity — do not pad the allocation.

The transaction date is in a closed period

Fix: either date the document inside an open period, or ask whoever closes the books to reopen it. Do not back-date into a closed month to make it save.

Nothing happened

“I finalised it and my accounts did not move”

Check what document it was. On the sales side only the sales invoice and the POS cash bill post to the ledger and move stock. A quotation, a sales order, a goods delivery note and an outbound delivery order are all deliberately inert.

On the purchasing side, a standard goods received note records the count; the purchase invoice books the stock and the liability.

This is not a fault. See best practices for the full picture.

“I raised it and nobody can see it”

It is a draft. A draft is invisible to everybody else and to every downstream screen — a draft sales order is not in the pick-pack queue, a draft invoice is not in any report, and a draft invoice will not appear when somebody searches for it on a receipt voucher.

“The customer paid but the invoice still shows outstanding”

The receipt voucher was finalised without a contra. The money is recorded and in the cashbook; it was just never applied to the invoice. Open the receipt and apply it on the Contra tab, or apply it from the Debtor Report.

“My price rule does nothing”

In this order:

Is the applet’s Default Pricebook set? Nothing in a price book is evaluated until the applet names it, and the setting is per applet. Then reload the applet — the book is read at start-up.
Is the price set ACTIVE? Only active price sets are evaluated. Note that the price book’s own Status field is not read at all.
Are you using a rule type that works? Item Category, Item Name Regex and the category regex rules never match; Company, Member Label, Currency and Settlement Method rules are treated as satisfied rather than evaluated; the Multi Line rules tab is not read; and a Relative Period date range never matches. See designing pricing rules.
Does the arithmetic make the price lower? A discount is only applied when the computed price is above zero and below the current price.

Things you cannot find

A document is missing from the listing

Listings are filtered by default — usually on posting status and a transaction-date window. This is the most common “missing document” in BigLedger and it is almost never a real loss.

Open Advanced Search, widen the date range, and clear the status filter.

An item cannot be selected on a document

Open it in Inventory Item Maintenance and look at FI Item Code on the Main tab. If it is blank, the item has no document-item twin and cannot go on any document. Items should be created from Doc Item Maintenance, which makes and links both records.

Also check the item’s branch and company linking — an item not linked to the company you are working in will not be offered.

A customer, supplier or GL code is missing from a dropdown

Usually one of: it is inactive; it is not linked to this branch or company; or you do not hold read permission on it. Check in that order.

Numbers that look wrong

Available stock is lower than the stock balance

Correct and expected. Open sales orders and delivery orders reduce the available quantity without moving the balance. If the gap is bigger than it should be, you have order lines that will never ship — close them in SO Line with SI KO, or void the orders.

The Trial Balance or Balance Sheet is empty

A Financial Report snapshot does not read your journals. It reads the per-account monthly summary rows that Month End Processing writes. Months that were never closed contribute nothing.

Run Month End Processing for the months in your range. To confirm that is the cause, run the ad-hoc Profit Loss Report instead — it reads journals directly, so if it shows numbers and the Trial Balance does not, unclosed months are your answer.

Two reports disagree

They usually read different document sets. The purchase report, for instance, reads only finalised purchase invoices and returns — no orders, no GRNs, no drafts. Check what each report reads on its applet reference page before assuming one is wrong.

Missing buttons, menus and applets

A useful rule of thumb:

Greyed out usually means the data is not in a state that allows it — a Final button on a document with no lines, for example.
Not there at all usually means a permission or a company setting. Many applets let an administrator hide the Final, Draft, Discard, Void and Print buttons, and whole menus, per role or per team.
A whole applet missing from your launchpad means it is not enabled for your company or not installed for your login.

None of these is fixable from where you are standing. Ask whoever administers your tenant, and tell them the applet and the button.

The two diagnostic screens worth knowing

Both live in the Financial Report applet, under Error Checking:

Trace Document answers why did this document post the way it did — or not at all. Give it a document and it shows you what happened. This is the first thing to reach for on any posting question, and it will usually end the conversation.
Stock Flow Report compares your inventory value against your accounting value, per module. When stock and the ledger have drifted apart, this is what shows you where.

Most documents also carry a TraceDocument tab of their own, showing the journal and cashbook rows that finalising created. Open it once on a document you know is right, so you know what right looks like.

What success looks like

You have got what you need from this page if, faced with a stuck document, you do these three in order:

Read the message and match it against the sections above — it names the missing thing.
Check the posting status. Draft explains an enormous proportion of “nothing happened”.
Open Trace Document if it is a posting question at all.

Common mistakes

What people do	What to do instead
Re-creating a “missing” document	Widen the listing’s Advanced Search first — it is almost always the default filter
Back-dating into a closed period to make something save	Date it in an open period, or have the period reopened properly
Voiding a finalised receipt to fix a typo	Use Settlement Adjustment
Assuming a stock gap is theft	Compare available against balance; open orders explain most of it
Blaming the report when a total looks wrong	Check what document set the report reads
Raising a support issue with “it does not work”	Say which tenant, which applet, what you did, and the exact message

Where to ask

If none of this fixes it, open an issue at BigLedger-Support/public. Include:

the tenant you are on and the applet you were in;
the document number and its posting status;
the exact message, copied rather than paraphrased;
what you expected to happen.

Those four lines turn several days of correspondence into one reply.