General ledger account balances can be affected by making a journal entry. In the Agvance system, manual entries are seldom necessary. Some examples of when a manual entry might be necessary would be when the accountant gives adjusting entries at year end or if a bill was expensed to the wrong account and an entry needs to move the amount from the incorrect account to the correct account.
The program requires a balanced journal entry (where the total of the debits equal the total of the credits). Journal entries are made into the current month, regardless of the date entered on the transaction, unless a previous period is selected or the Future Journal Entry option is checked on the Add a General Journal Entry screen.
There are four types of journal entries:
- General Entries – These affect only the selected G/L account balances.
- Vendor Entries – Vendor Entries affect the selected vendor's balance if the vendor’s location Accounts Payable key account is one of the selected accounts. It is important to note that manually created Vendor entries will not affect A/P Bills and therefore should not be made to pay bills or adjust Invoice balances.
- Customer Entries These entries are made automatically by transactions that affect the customer account (invoicing and payment on account). Customer entries cannot be created manually.
- Future Entries – These may be made when the journal entry is to be posted in the month following the current month. The entry is made by selecting the Future Journal Entry option. Instead of affecting the general ledger accounts at the time of the save, this entry goes into the future journal. It resides there until the fiscal month is ended. At that time, all future entries are brought into the journal and affect the account balances in the new month.
How to Make Entries in Previous Periods
When ending the fiscal month, there are a minimum of one thousand blank journal entries reserved for later use. Any number of journal entries greater than 1000 may be reserved at month end. As long as there are available entries reserved in a particular month, journal entries may be posted to that previous period.
- Go to G/L / General Journal Entries and add the entry.
- Before saving, select the month from the Period drop down in which the entry is to post.
- Select Save. As it posts the journal entry, the end of month balances are adjusted for all accounts affected by the entry.
Note: It is important to re-run any financial statements for the months affected by previous entries.
Note: Entries to previous years cannot be done using this feature.
