General ledger and journal entries

The general ledger is part of company Accounting. Project Financials contains each project’s budgets, contracts and commitments; access and posting are separate.

Open Accounting > Journal entries (/companies/{company_id}/accounting/journal) to create a draft. Select an open posting date and enter balanced debit and credit lines. A permitted user submits a draft; when approval is required, an independent authorized user reviews it before posting. Approval rules can route journal entries by amount, entity or project, for example two approvers above $50,000, and a delegate can approve for an absent approver during the delegation window. An approver can Reject a pending entry with a reason, which returns it to the preparer as a draft. A matching approval rule applies whenever an entry is posted, even below the approval threshold: a draft that was never submitted, or was edited after a rejection, must be submitted and approved before it can post. An allocation run at or above the threshold is saved for approval instead of posting, and a second person must approve it.

Posted entries are not edited or deleted. Correct a manual entry with its supported reversal and choose a permitted posting period. Entries originating in another accounting workflow are corrected from that source.

Use General ledger, Trial balance and Reports to review posted amounts. Project and cost-code dimensions may be attached where the workflow supports them. See Accounting overview and Close the month.

Recurring entries and auto-reversing accruals run on their own once a day. Shortly after midnight in the company’s accounting time zone (set on the Settings page; Pacific time by default), a job generates every recurring occurrence and reversal due as of that local date; retries and repeated runs don’t post twice. A user with journal posting permission can also click Run recurring & auto-reversals on the Journal entries page to run it immediately. Set up templates under Recurring templates: each has a schedule and balanced lines, and creates a draft on each run date. A template set to post automatically posts only after a second person approves it, and any edit clears that approval. Automatic postings are recorded as posted by that approver and marked automated in the audit trail. If that approver loses journal approval permission, the template creates drafts instead and shows “approval lapsed” until someone re-approves it. The daily job runs as the scheduler user chosen on the Settings page. That user needs journal posting permission for every entity. If no scheduler user is set, the job runs as the first active admin and the Accounting home page shows a warning. They never post into a soft-closed period: the occurrence waits until the period reopens, and an occurrence in a hard-closed period is skipped. The Recurring templates page shows each template’s last problem, and the Accounting home lists templates that need attention.

The chart of accounts shows balances as of today the way the trial balance does: income and expense accounts show the fiscal year to date. Click a balance to open the account’s ledger; anyone who can view the ledger can open an account’s page. An account that holds a system role or a balance can’t be deactivated, and neither can the default entity or an entity with balances. Moving a control-account role off an account with activity needs an accounting owner or a user who manages grants, and the old account must net to zero.

Intercompany entries

When a company has more than one entity, the journal form shows an Entity column on each line and an Intercompany checkbox. Check it to code lines to other entities: when the entry posts, the app adds a due-to line in each other entity and a matching due-from line in the entry’s entity (or the reverse), so every entity balances on its own. The accounts come from each entity’s intercompany due-to and due-from mapping; posting is refused until each entity has the account its side of the entry uses (due-to or due-from) mapped. The approver sees the draft without these lines; they are added when the entry posts and count toward the posted total. Without the checkbox, lines in different entities must balance per entity.

Transfers between bank accounts in different entities and equipment usage charged to a job in another entity post the same way. The close’s ledger check includes Intercompany due-to and due-from net to zero across all entities. It runs only for companies with two or more entities, and only when every active entity is in scope.

Journal entry, account and period pages show an Audit trail with each recorded change, who made it and when. Journal lines can also carry cost type, department, vendor and customer: choose More dimensions on the journal form (a column shows only when the company has values for it). In Settings, each entity can be edited: code, name, legal name, active status and its intercompany due-to and due-from accounts.