Where are my journal entries?

2 minute read time.

It is month end and there’s a shout from accounting “Help! Transactions didn’t hit the General Ledger!”   You find that some or all transactions aren’t captured in journal entries. What happened and what can you do?

  • Identify what transactions appear to be missing so you can narrow down the search.
  • Let’s begin our troubleshooting by looking at the report or inquiry that is being reviewed:
    • Is the report being run for the right period/site/company?
    • Was it executed on the test folder instead of production?
    • Does the report only include journals in Final status and you still have journals in Temporary status?
      • To move your journals to Final status, execute Final validation under Financials, Current processing for the applicable company, site, journals, date.

    • If you are using Inquiries, click the Criteria button to find out what you are excluding/including. The Criteria sometimes has options which aren’t available on the Inquiry Header.
    • Is this a user’s personal custom report? Try one of the out-of-the box reports or inquires such as Account Balance inquiry (CONSBAL) or General Balance report (BALGRP) to verify activity.
  • Run the Pre-closing verification report (CLOPER). It is great for identifying transactions that still need to be posted.
  • Not all transactions post to the General Ledger in real time. Some require user interaction.
    • The Sales, Purchase and A/P-A/R journals as well as manually entered Journals post to the General Ledger in real time.
    • The Production, Fixed Assets, and Stock journals post to the General Ledger via a user-controlled interaction, which can be run by a batch process
      • For Inventory transactions, select Inventory, Periodic Processing, Valuation, Account. Interface.
      • For Production transactions, run the WIP Accounting Interface by selecting Costing, WIP, In-process posting.
      • For Fixed Assets transactions, select Fixed Assets, Processing, Account. interface, Generation of accounting entries.
    • Note: The Batch Server and Accounting task must be active before the above transactions will flow to the General Ledger.
  • Verify that the Accounting task, under Usage, Batch server is not only Active, but the values for Journals on Hold and Matching are both zero.

                           

  • Do you have recurring tasks that have stopped running or the transaction Logs haven’t been reviewed for errors?
    • Recurring tasks can be monitored under Usage, Batch server, Query management.
    • Transaction Logs can be viewed by clicking on the Action icon on the recurring function’s grid line.
    • See the blog “Are your recurring task recurring?” for additional tips.
  • If none of your transactions are posting to the General Ledger, look at the interface related parameters under Setup, General parameters, Parameters to ensure an accounting interface is authorized. For example:
    • For Stock transactions: Chapter STO, Group ACC, Parameter ACCIFA should be set to Yes
    • For Manufacturing transactions: Chapter GPA, Group ACC, Parameter OPEIFA should be set to Yes
  • Check that you haven’t set the Accounting Codes up so that the transaction is debiting and crediting the same account.
    • If the NULAMTIFA parameter is set to No, journal entries are not created for $0 transactions.
    • If the NULAMTIFA parameter is set to Yes, you will have journal lines with no amounts.
  • Are you receiving errors that are preventing the transactions from posting? Journal Entries aren’t generated until errors are resolved.
    • Review the transaction logs.
    • Check out the Sage Knowledgebase to resolve the errors.
  • Contact your local support team for assistance if you need further assistance