Financial Accounting Module

This module holds the general ledger and the customer, supplier and bank sub-ledgers beside it, for whoever keeps the books. FINAL is the posting status. A business document posts nothing while it is a draft; pressing Final starts a job that writes its journal (and its stock movement and cashbook line, where it has them) a moment later, and Void undoes most of it (What a Void Undoes lists what it leaves). A manual journal posts the moment it is created. Cost of goods sold waits for month-end. When a ledger figure is wrong, ask which document wrote it, and did its posting run?

Start here.

Setting up a company? Chart of Accounts Setup, then Set of Books, Fiscal Years and Fiscal Periods.
Doing a routine job — a journal, a bank reconciliation, opening balances, credit limits? The Accounting guides walk each one.
Closing a month? Month-end closing, then the check before you lock it.
A figure looks wrong? Find what you see in When a figure looks wrong, or start from When two numbers don’t tally. What posts to the ledger explains why.

A document can be FINAL with no journal behind it, and nobody is told. The journal is built by a job after FINAL; a missing receivable or payable default GL code (or none at all) or a settlement method with no cashbook stops it. A missing sales, purchase or tax default is quieter: the journal posts with that line left out. Ledger And Journal › Error Checking › Missing Journal finds them for the common document types — Ledger And Journal › What happens when you press Finalise.

Pages and guides for this module

What posts to the ledger, and where balances come from, Set of Books, Fiscal Years and Fiscal Periods and Financial Report Structure — the concepts.
Chart of Accounts Setup, Opening Balance Migration, Journal Entries, Bank Reconciliation, Month-end closing and Financial Reporting — the routine jobs.
Who May Change the Books and Reviewing a Set of Books — separating duties.

Applets in this module

Job	Applets
The ledger	Ledger And Journal (journals and Error Checking) · Financial Report (Month End Processing, statements, Profit Loss Report, Stock Flow Report, Trace Document)
Money in, money out	Receipt Voucher · Payment Voucher · Reimbursement Payment Voucher · Purchase Invoice
Proving the bank	Bank Reconciliation (posts nothing)
Who owes whom	Debtor Report · Creditor Report · Debtor and Creditor Report · Statement of Account
Assets, treasury, budget	Fixed Asset · Deposit · Budgetary · Cashflow Projection (a billing-and-collection planning register)
Tax	MY-SST

When a figure looks wrong, start from what you see

The bookkeeper’s symptom table is on the Accounting guides hub, When something looks wrong: find the sentence you would say and follow its link. A document that is FINAL with no journal behind it is The invoice is FINAL but it is not in the ledger. Two symptoms start elsewhere:

What you see	Read next
Out by the same amount every month since go-live	Opening Balance Migration
GL bank balance and cashbook disagree	Bank reconciliation still won’t tally

Limits, and what to do instead

No approval on journals or vouchers. They post on Create or Final without a sign-off; the control is permissions plus a review (Who May Change the Books).
No cash flow statement. The finance manager builds it at each close from two balance sheets and the period’s profit and loss, and checks it ends at the change in cash (What has no report).
Combined group statements exist; elimination does not. Link several companies’ ledgers to one Set of Books and its statements sum them. The group finance manager agrees and removes intercompany balances outside BigLedger (Reviewing a Set of Books, Step 6).
The depreciation run does not yet post a usable journal (Fixed Asset › The depreciation journal). Post monthly depreciation as a journal and tie each asset’s net book value to the ledger.
Budgets record spending, they do not stop it. Only finalised invoices consume one, where BigLedger has wired the budget jobs. Whoever approves a spend reads the register first.

What posts to the ledger — and what does not

A finalised document’s journal is built from one table of seven posting rules: What posts to the ledger, and where balances come from.

What does not post

Cost of sales at FINAL, the report applets and several documents post nothing. The list, and the reason for each, is on What posts to the ledger › What does not post.

When cost of goods sold reaches the ledger

Once a month, not with each sale. Run Month End Processing for each Set of Books, and again after a back-dated document; nothing runs it on a schedule. The formula, the defaults it needs and the closing-stock setting are on What posts to the ledger › When cost of goods sold reaches the ledger.

What it touches elsewhere

Before documents post, each company needs the Default GL Codes they use in Chart of Account and every settlement method a cashbook; without a receivable or payable default, or a cashbook, a document finalises with no journal, and without a sales, purchase or tax default its journal posts short. What a missing default or cashbook costs you.
A back-dated document reaches backwards, and a lock does not freeze automatic journals — Month-end closing › If something lands in March after you have closed.