Stuck documents, missing records and empty reports: the common fixes

A document that will not finalise, a Final document with no journal behind it, a record that seems to have vanished, a report that comes back empty, a button that is not there: these are problems that actually come up in BigLedger, each with the real message and the real fix. If you are stuck on a posting problem, start with the two diagnostic screens at the bottom of this page.

Refusals at Finalise

“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: the block reads a flag on the customer record, set by a person or by the Blacklist Overdue Customer job. That job is not a default clock; it runs only where someone schedules it or runs it by hand. Nothing recalculates the flag as you type.

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

Fix: find out who set the flag and why, then clear it. Wherever the job runs, each run clears every flag, hand-set ones included, and re-flags only customers over a credit limit: see Stopping a customer.

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.

Finalised, and nothing happened

“I finalised it and my accounts did not move”

Check what document it was. On the sales side, a sales invoice, a POS cash bill or a Sales GIN Stock Out (created only through the API) is what moves stock and posts to the ledger. 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.

“It is FINAL, but there is no journal” — a message naming a missing GL code

What you see: the document reads FINAL and looks normal on the listing, but on its Posting tab the journal status is empty where a posted document reads POSTED, and the ledger has not moved. You meet the message — MISSING_DEFAULT_GL_CODE naming a code such as DEBTOR or CREDITOR, or COMPANY_DEFAULT_GL_CODE_NOT_EXIST — only when you trace the document and press Resolve.

What is happening: FINAL does not read your GL codes. It saves the status and starts the posting in the background, and the posting builds the journal from your company’s default GL codes. When the customer’s or supplier’s account is not mapped for that company (or the company has no defaults at all), the posting fails and the document stays FINAL with no journal. Nobody is told — the person who finalised it saw a normal FINAL.

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. Then open Financial Report › Error Checking › Trace Document, give it the document type and number, and press Resolve on Missing Journal. To find every document it happened to, Ledger And Journal › Error Checking › Missing Journal lists FINAL documents of one type with no journal, for a date range.

The quieter case: when the missing code is a sales, purchase or tax account, nothing fails at all. That line is left out and the customer’s or supplier’s line absorbs it, so a journal exists and Trace Document finds nothing. The sign is a receivable or payable account that no longer agrees with the ageing.

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

What is happening: a settlement line’s method has no cashbook behind it, or that cashbook has no GL code. On a receipt, payment voucher or cash bill the message comes from the posting after FINAL: the document is FINAL and has no journal, as above (a receipt voucher has no Posting tab, so trace it by number). On a cash transfer the same is true: FINAL is saved first and the journal and cashbook lines post straight after, so the transfer reads FINAL with the failed half missing.

Fix: map the settlement method to a cashbook with a GL code in the Cashbook applet, then Resolve the document in Trace Document (a cash transfer you simply finalise again). This is configuration, not something you can work around on the document.

“I raised it and nobody can see it”

It is a draft. A draft is not hidden from colleagues — anyone whose permission covers its company or branch can open it — but it does nothing and reaches no 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 by any calculator, so it never prices the line in front of you (a till reads it on a separate purchase-with-purchase pass); and a Relative Period date range never matches. See designing pricing rules.
4. 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

Search Doc Item Maintenance for the code. If nothing comes back, the item has no document-item twin and cannot go on any document. A blank FI Item Code in Inventory Item Maintenance proves nothing: the link may show only as the doc item’s Inv Item Code. Create items 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.

If the item exists and is properly linked and item search still will not offer it, the search may be filtering on stock at this document’s location — see The stock quantity shows zero and there is stock on the shelf.

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.

Stock and report figures

Available stock is lower than the stock balance

Correct and expected, and it is one of four reasons a stock figure is not the one you expected — the others are on The stock quantity shows zero and there is stock on the shelf. 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.

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 installed on your login; nothing turns an applet on for a whole company. If the Applet Store shows it to you, install it there. If not, your tenant’s Owner or Admin can link you to its catalogue or install it for you, and BigLedger is the last resort. Finding your way around tells the two cases apart.

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 the amounts on your finalised documents with the journals they posted, per module. It finds a purchase or sale with no journal or the wrong one. It does not compare stock with the stock account; for that, see Stock report versus the stock account on the balance sheet.

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:

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

Common mistakes

Related documentation