Ledgers, a set of books and the fiscal year — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if GadgetSphere has a company, branches and locations, and you are back in the Chart of Account applet for the second time. Three records here, none of which posts anything by itself, and all three of which something later refuses to run without. About twelve minutes.

Step 1 — Create the primary ledger before anything else here

After this step the next lesson will be possible. Open the company under Companies and go to its Ledgers tab. You already have one: BigLedger created a primary ledger in the company currency when the company was saved. Confirm it is there, give it a code and name you recognise, and move on. If for any reason there is none, create one now with type primary. This is not housekeeping — every default GL code you map in the next lesson creates or reuses a sub-ledger on the primary ledger, so without one the mapping has nowhere to land. One primary ledger per company is the right shape while the group is small.

Reference: Chart of Account — Before you can use it

Step 2 — Do not create it as secondary

After this step you will have avoided a rework that is easy to walk into. A ledger can be primary, secondary or consolidated, and the drop-down offers all three with no hint about which you want. Only a primary ledger carries the Opening Balance tab, which is where your migration balances go and where the trial balance you will check at the end of this course comes from. Create the wrong type and the tab simply is not there — which reads like a permission problem, and is not. If it has happened, create a proper primary ledger before anything is posted, rather than trying to change the one you have.

Reference: Chart of Accounts Setup Guide — Step 6: Create the primary ledger and Set of Books

Step 3 — Create a set of books and put the ledger in it

After this step month-end will have something to run against. A set of books is a binder: it groups one or more ledgers for one reporting purpose. Most groups start with one statutory set containing one primary ledger, and add a management set later. Create it, then open its Ledgers tab and link your primary ledger — and treat that second half as the real step, because it is the half people skip. A set of books with no ledger linked does not warn you at creation. It fails later, at month-end, with a message about missing primary ledger configuration, and that is an hour of searching in the wrong place.

Reference: Chart of Account — Set of Books

Step 4 — Create the fiscal year and check its periods

After this step documents can be dated. Fiscal Year takes a company, a name and a start and end date, and the screen generates one period per calendar month from that range. Open the year afterwards and look at the Fiscal Period tab: confirm the months you expect are all there and each is open. GadgetSphere runs January to December, so it creates the year covering today’s date before anything is raised. If a previous year already exists, make the new year start exactly the day after the old one ends — overlapping dates are refused, and the message talks about overlapping periods rather than about the year you actually need to fix.

Reference: Chart of Account — Fiscal Year and Fiscal Periods

Step 5 — Use the four period locks deliberately

After this step you can protect a closed month without freezing the business. There are four closing statuses and they are easier in plain English than in their names. Open means anything goes. Lock GL stops new manual journals but lets documents post, along with the automatic journals they generate. Lock transactions is the other way round: no invoices, bills, payments or stock documents dated in that month — with one exception the next step names — but manual journals still allowed. Lock all stops both. During a mid-year cutover, set the months your old system owned to lock transactions — that stops anyone back-dating a sale into them while you still post opening-balance journals. Save lock all for after audit sign-off.

Reference: Chart of Accounts Setup Guide — Step 8: Open the fiscal year and set the period status

Step 6 — Know exactly what the locks do not stop

After this step you will not mistake a lock for a guarantee. Three gaps are worth writing down. Stock transfers between branches are explicitly exempt, so they can still be finalised into a locked month. The lock on manual journals is checked when a journal is created and not when one is cloned or when an existing journal’s date is edited, so both of those routes land in a locked month without complaint. And any period can be set back to open by anybody who can open this applet, with no approval and no second signature. The lock is a guard against accidents, not a control against intent — the control is who has the applet installed.

Reference: Chart of Account — Lifecycle and effects

Step 7 — Enter the opening balances on the primary ledger

After this step GadgetSphere’s history is in the ledger and you can prove it in one screen. Open the primary ledger under Companies and use its Opening Balance tab: add a GL code for each account you are migrating, key the debit or credit as at the day before the fiscal year starts, and save. BigLedger writes it as a single opening-balance journal and opens a financial report view of it from the same tab — trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet. For a group of GadgetSphere’s size the total typically runs four to eight million ringgit. Read two things on that view. Total debits must equal total credits: if they do not, something is missing, mis-keyed or on the wrong side, so compare it against the old system’s trial balance line by line. And where each balance lands proves every category sits under a section — cash and debtors under current assets, capital under share capital.

Reference: Chart of Account — Lifecycle and effects

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Create the primary ledger before anything else here"]
  s2["Step 2 — Do not create it as secondary"]
  s3["Step 3 — Create a set of books and put the ledger in it"]
  s4["Step 4 — Create the fiscal year and check its periods"]
  s5["Step 5 — Use the four period locks deliberately"]
  s6["Step 6 — Know exactly what the locks do not stop"]
  s7["Step 7 — Enter the opening balances on the primary ledger"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  s6 --> s7
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next: The mapping that decides whether a document posts · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation