Working with General Ledger

General Ledger reads the journal entries that make up your books. Each entry is a posting, with who prepared it, who approved it, its date and its amount. It compares them with your chart of accounts (the list of accounts your books use), your approval rules and the pattern of your earlier entries. It reports every entry that breaks a rule, with the amount in dollars. This page is how to work with it from day to day.

What to put in the Data Room

One export is sufficient to begin. Add your journal entries, every line for the period, as a PDF export from your accounting system, with Add to Data Room. It sits beside Contracts and Agreements and Invoices, and the module's own Data Room tab lists it under Journal entries. One export covering a month or more produces a first finding. The checks that need nothing else, such as the same person preparing and approving an entry, run at once.

Add your chart of accounts next, and the suspense check then knows which accounts are named suspense or uncategorised, the parking places for unknown items. The rare-pair check can name both accounts an entry moves money between. The sub-ledger check compares the totals in your ledger with the detailed records behind them. The payables (what you owe), the receivables (what you are owed), cash and assets must agree with the modules that own that detail. Your approval rules, and the amount above which an entry needs a second reviewer, are not documents. The module asks for them only when a check needs them, as the next section explains.

A Connection can bring in your journal entries and your chart of accounts as rows, so you add nothing by hand. A row it brings in is examined the same way as a line from an export you added. Open the module's Data Room tab to see what it has drawn on. The Data Room explains where documents live and what each kind is for, and Connections lists what you can connect today.

When it asks you a question

General Ledger asks you nothing when you add it. It asks a question only when a check needs the answer, and until then it uses a default and names it in the finding, so you can correct it when it matters. Five questions can arise: the amount above which a hand-posted entry needs a second pair of eyes, how many days after month end you close the books, and which accounts you park unknown items in. The other two are any accrual (a cost booked before its invoice arrives) that stays on the books instead of reversing next month, and any unusual pairing of accounts that is normal for you. Until you answer, a second pair of eyes is needed above $5,000, the close is ten days after month end, and any account named suspense or uncategorised counts as a parking place.

A question arrives as a needs-information finding in the Findings list, and as a card in Ask Ressura. Your answer becomes an entry in your Organisational context, with your name and the date on it, and the check runs again automatically. Every answer here applies to the module as a whole, not to one preparer. A threshold, a close date or a suspense account is the same for everyone who posts to your books.

How to read a finding

The module's Overview shows Entries needing review, the total value of the journal entries in the period that broke a rule. The list of Preparers sits beneath it, each with how many entries they posted, the value, and how much of it needs review. Preparers are people, so members see an id where admins and the Owner see a name, as Members and roles explains. Its Findings tab lists every finding: the preparer, the Control that produced it, its kind, the amount where there is one, the confidence, its disposition and the date. Choose Review finding to open one.

An exception says what the entry did and which of your rules it does not fit: the amount, the date it was posted and the date it carries, the two accounts it moves money between, and who prepared and approved it. Its provenance shows the journal line, the rule or context entry it was tested against, and the earlier entries it was compared with, so you can check the reasoning yourself. When a finding leans on a default rather than a value you gave, it says so.

A needs-information finding names the answer that would let a check finish: an approval rule it does not have, the name behind a user id, or where a balance parked in suspense belongs. It never blocks the other checks. The digit-pattern check compares the first digits of hand-posted entries with the pattern real figures follow; a big gap is put to you as a question, never as an exception. Nothing in this list says whether an entry was deliberate; a fraud-risk finding comes from Fraud Watch and links the findings behind it. The Checks tab shows each of the nine Controls with its pass, exception and needs-information counts for the period.

How to disposition a finding

You answer a finding in one of three ways, and each answer is recorded with your name and the date. Accept an exception when the entry does need a second look, such as one above your threshold that nobody but its preparer approved, and add a note if you like. Reject it with the reason when the entry was right, such as a hand-posted rent entry flagged for its round amount, because the rent is a round amount. The reason becomes a context entry, scoped to this finding, this preparer, this module or the whole company, so the same point is never raised twice. Answer a needs-information finding by typing the answer, such as which account a suspense balance belongs in, and the check then runs again.

A preparer's own page, under Preparers, gathers their findings, the journal entries they posted and their context entries in one place. Preparers are people, so there is no button to draft an email, and adding a context entry is the one action. Findings and Dispositions has the rules every module shares, including the two-person rule for rejecting a fraud-risk finding.

What it costs

Running its checks, opening a finding and dispositioning one cost nothing, and checking the same documents again is free.

This page is the how-to. The General Ledger page says why it exists and what it checks.