Journal entries

A journal entry is an adjustment posted straight to your ledger. It exists for the corrections no invoice, bill or bank explanation can make - accruals and prepayments, reclassifying something posted to the wrong account, or clearing a balance stuck in Suspense.

Go to Settings, then Journal Entries.

Before you start

• Reading the register needs the Tax, Accounting & Users level, so a read-only accountant can review journals without posting any.
• Posting, editing or deleting one needs Full Access with write permission.

Post a journal

1. Choose New journal entry.
2. Enter the date and a description.
3. Add at least two lines. On each, pick an account and enter an amount in either the Debit or the Credit column - never both on one line.
4. Watch the Difference readout at the foot. It must reach zero before the entry can be saved.
5. Choose Save.

Amounts are pounds and pence, so at most two decimal places. Kontala refuses a third rather than rounding it: a journal is usually transcribed from a trial balance somebody has already balanced, and a silent rounding could unbalance it by a penny with nothing on screen to say so.

Some lines can also carry a person, where the account is one that is tracked per user.

Which accounts you can post to

Not every account is available. The picker offers the accounts where a hand-keyed adjustment is meaningful, and leaves out the ones an engine owns:

• Bank accounts - reconciled from your bank transactions.
• Stock - pinned to the FIFO cost pool by your documents.
• Depreciation and disposal accounts - owned by the capital assets engine, which keys them to real asset records.
• VAT control accounts - reached by the VAT engine, and by opening balances only.
• CIS control accounts - cleared by the CIS set-off and by filing a return.
• Suspense is postable, so a correcting journal can clear it.

Editing and deleting

Editing a journal reverses the original and posts the replacement. Deleting reverses it at its own date.

Both are refused if either the old or the new date falls in a year you have already approved or a tax year you have closed.

Journals are not blocked by a filed VAT period. None of the accounts in the ordinary picker can reach a VAT box, so a filed quarter is no reason to refuse one.

What a journal cannot do

A journal moves ledger balances. It does not create the records behind them - it will not add an asset to your capital assets register, move stock, or produce a document.

Use the real screen for those.

Related

• Opening balances
• Trial balance
• Audit trail