When two numbers don't tally

Two reports over the same period give different totals. Which is right? When two numbers don't tally

“Two reports over the same period give different totals. Which is right?” Usually both, each for a different moment: most of the time one of the two is an older figure, worked out and stored before a late or back-dated document arrived, and the thirty-second check below tells you which side moved.

Two figures that should agree, don’t: two reports disagree, or a number looks wrong and you cannot tell which one to believe.

Before you go looking for a missing transaction — and that is where most of an afternoon goes — find your symptom below. Each page opens with a check you can run on the screen in front of you, in about thirty seconds, and tells you which of the two figures is the one that moved.

Most of the time neither is broken. One of them is simply older than the other, or the two were never counting the same documents. Most of the reasons in the table further down need nothing fixed at all — only knowing which figure is which. Where one does need repairing, the table says how, and most of those repairs are yours to make.

Find your symptom

The aging still shows an invoice that’s already paid — you received the money, the invoice itself says zero, and the report still lists it as outstanding.
Everything is matched to zero and the reconciliation still won’t tally — or a month you finished weeks ago has quietly drifted open again.
The Trial Balance doesn’t agree with the ledger — the account you drilled into adds up to something else, an account is missing altogether, or the whole report comes back empty.
The order still shows a quantity outstanding after I invoiced it all — and it is holding stock back from customers who could have had it.
The margin report and the profit and loss don’t agree — or last quarter’s gross profit has moved since the last time you looked at it.
I knocked it off and the outstanding balance hasn’t changed — the payment is applied, the settlement is listed, and the figure you are watching has not moved.
The credit note is not in the aging report — you raised it, and the invoice still shows its full value.
Stock shows zero and there is stock on the shelf — one screen counts one location and another counts them all.

The 30-second check: how you know which figure moved

It needs no knowledge of how the platform works, and it works on any pair of figures.

Check the two screens are asking the same question first. A different company, a different branch, a different Set of Books, a date range that includes the end date on one side and excludes it on the other. A surprising share of “not tally” cases end here.
Drill in and add it up. Open the detail behind the figure — the journal lines behind the account, the documents behind the customer’s balance, the cashbook lines behind the reconciliation — and total them.
Read the result. If the detail agrees with the headline, the headline is current. If the detail is bigger than the headline, the headline is an older figure that was worked out before those extra rows existed. That tells you which side moved without knowing anything about why.

Then work out what put the extra rows there — nearly always something dated backwards: a supplier invoice that arrived late, a receipt keyed on the 4th and dated the 28th, a void, a corrected transaction date.

If the detail and the headline agree and the two reports still differ, the gap is not about age. It is one of the later rows of the table below, and step 2 has already told you which side holds the extra documents.

Why two figures that should agree do not

Six reasons, in the order you should rule them out — the first ones are the cheapest to check.

What you see	Why	What to do
A report you printed for a closed month no longer matches the same report run today	One of the two is a stored figure, or a printout. A document dated inside the month arrived, was voided or was re-dated after you printed	Find what arrived late: the documents created after the day you closed that are dated inside the month. The full story, per stored figure, is Which figures BigLedger stores
Last month’s historical aging does not match the receivables account at month end	The month’s aging snapshot is copied from each document’s live balance at the moment the monthly job runs. If it ran on the 5th instead of the 1st, “end of last month” holds the 5th’s balances — and a row once written is kept	Read the as-at aging for a past month as “the day the job ran”, not the month end. The aging still shows an invoice that’s already paid explains when a past month is rebuilt, and who rebuilds it
A document-based report includes an invoice that the ledger, the cashbook or the stock ledger does not — yet	Finalising and posting are two steps. FINAL is saved first; the journal, the stock movement and the cashbook line are built afterwards by background jobs. For a moment, or for good if a job failed, the document is FINAL with nothing behind it	Wait a minute and look again. If it is still missing, see A document that is FINAL with no journal below
The aging, or any report that reads the invoice itself, is higher than the profit and loss and the receivables account — by the same amount, and by less than one document’s total	A line with no account to post to was left out of that document’s journal, and the customer’s line was cut to match. The journal balances, so nothing complained	See A journal that left a line out below
The aging lists a customer that the trade debtors account does not	The account a document posts to is chosen per company, from the customer’s AR/AP type for that company. A customer set to other debtors in one company posts there, not to trade debtors	Compare the aging with the sum of the receivable accounts, not with trade debtors alone. Correct the type on the customer’s Company Linking, then re-post the documents
Cost of sales on the profit and loss against the stock report’s closing value	Month End Processing writes cost of sales once, from opening stock, purchases, adjustments and closing stock — and uses a manual closing value instead, if someone entered one that is not zero. A purchase dated into the month after the run moves the stock report and not cost of sales	Re-run Month End Processing for the month. The margin report and the P&L don’t agree walks it

And when it is two reports in the same module, they usually read different documents. Each module’s reports page carries its own table of pairs that should agree and do not:

Point of sale — the till’s Z Report against Daily Cashier Reports, Daily Summary against the takings, card takings against the card cashbook: POS › Reports.
Purchasing — the Outstanding Document Report against the creditor accounts, a goods receipt invoiced without its knock-off: Purchasing › Reports.
Inventory — the stock reports against each other and against the stock account: Inventory › Reports.
Membership — a member’s balance against their point transactions, the till’s points discount against the points redeemed: Membership › Reports.

A document that is FINAL with no journal

Finalising does not post. It asks for the posting. When you press FINAL, BigLedger saves the document’s status and then queues the jobs that build its journal, its stock movement and its cashbook line. The screen returns as soon as the status is saved. If one of those jobs fails — for example because the customer’s or supplier’s receivable or payable account has not been mapped for that company — the document stays FINAL with no journal, and the person who finalised it sees no message.

How you know. In Financial Report › Error Checking › Trace Document, open the document. The Missing Journal check says Posting journal missing. For a whole month at once, Ledger And Journal › Error Checking › Missing Journal lists FINAL documents with no journal — one document type per search, and both dates open on today, so set them to the month you are closing.

What to do. Fix the cause first, then press Resolve on Missing Journal. If the cause is still there, Resolve posts nothing and shows you the reason — which is the quickest way to find it.

A journal that left a line out

This one is quiet, and it is worth knowing exactly what it looks like.

GadgetSphere Online Sdn Bhd (GSO) sells an ultraportable laptop on credit for RM 4,000 plus RM 240 tax. The company’s default sales account was never mapped for that kind of invoice. A missing GL mapping for sales or tax never stops FINAL and fails nothing at all: BigLedger leaves the sales line out of the journal, builds the tax line, and makes the customer’s line whatever balances what is left. The journal is RM 240 debit to receivables, RM 240 credit to tax — balanced, posted, and RM 4,000 short on both sides.

So the invoice says RM 4,240, and the aging, which reads the invoice, says the customer owes RM 4,240. The profit and loss shows none of the RM 4,000 sale, and the receivables account is RM 4,000 lower than the aging.

How you know. Open the invoice’s Trace Document tab and read its journal lines: compare the receivables line with the document total. If it is smaller, a line was left out. Do not rely on the Wrong Journal check for this: it looks only at lines keyed against a GL code with no GL code on them, so a goods line left out of the journal passes it as Posting journal looks OK.

What to do. Map the missing default account for the company in the Chart of Account applet, then open the document in Financial Report › Error Checking › Trace Document and press Repost. The button appears once the document’s journal is marked posted, and not for a foreign-currency document. Repost deletes the document’s journal and builds it again from the document as it stands now, with today’s mappings.

What that does to a month you have closed. The rebuilt journal carries the document’s own date, not today’s. Re-post a September invoice in October and September’s ledger moves. Tell whoever signed September off, and re-run Month End Processing for it — the stored month-end figures do not follow on their own.

Who ties the figures, and when

The software builds every figure. Deciding which ones must agree, and checking that they do, is still somebody’s job — usually whoever closes the month, before they sign it off. The order that saves the most time:

Make sure everything posted. Run Missing Journal for the month, for each document type you use. An empty list for every type is your proof. Any document on it is a figure that is in the documents and not in the ledger. It will not find a journal that left a line out — the receivables tie in step 3 is what catches that one.
Then rebuild what is stored. Run Month End Processing for the month, after the late documents are in, not before.
Then tie. Receivables: the aging total against the sum of the receivable accounts. Payables: the same, against the payable accounts. Stock: the stock report against the stock account. Each pair should agree to the ringgit, or differ by a figure you can name.
Write down what you tied, and when. A signed figure that moves later is only explainable if you know the date it was signed — every rule on this page is about a document that arrived after somebody looked.

How you know you got it right. Run the same report again a week later. If it still matches what you signed, nothing was back-dated into the month. If it does not, the difference is a list of documents you can find by created date — and that is the whole of the investigation.

When it is a support matter

When the 30-second check, the table and both repairs above leave a gap you can name in ringgit and cannot find in any document, send support:

the two screens, with the filters you used on each;
the company, the account or customer, and the period;
the amount of the gap, to the sen;
what the drill-down added up to.

That is enough for support to start on the document that is out of step, rather than on the report.

What this page cannot tell you

Which figure your group treats as the official one. Where two reports measure different things — the till’s Z Report and Daily Cashier Reports, today’s aging and last month’s — choosing one as the figure of record is a decision for your finance team. Agree it once and write it down; most month-end arguments are two people quoting two right answers.
Whether to re-post into a month you have closed, or correct it in the month you are in. Both are defensible. Re-posting makes the document and its journal agree again and moves a month someone signed. A correcting journal in the open month leaves the closed month alone, but a manual journal on the receivables account appears in the ledger and never in the aging, so that pair will differ by the correction for good. Which your group prefers is a policy, and the page does not choose it for you.
Why a background job failed. The reason is written to an error log on the server. The quickest way to see it yourself is to press Resolve on the failing check in Trace Document: if the cause is still there, the message it shows is the reason.

What this sits on, and what it touches

What must exist first. Every figure that comes from the ledger depends on the company’s default accounts being mapped — receivables, payables, sales, purchases and tax. A missing receivable or payable mapping stops the journal altogether; a missing sales or tax mapping leaves the line out. The monthly aging snapshot depends on its scheduled job running on the 1st.
What breaks if a sales or tax mapping is missing. Not one report: every invoice of that type, in that company, posted while it was missing — the profit and loss, the receivables account and the balance sheet together — while the reports that read the documents (the aging, the outstanding documents) stay right. That split is the signature.
The page next to this one. Which figures BigLedger stores, and which it works out fresh explains the first row of the table: the six places the platform stores an answer instead of working it out again, when each is taken, and why the obvious alternative would be worse. Use this page to find which kind of gap you have; use that one when the answer is “one of them is older”.
What it pairs with. Trace Document, alongside every report on this page. A report tells you a figure is different; Trace Document tells you whether one document’s postings are all there.