§ 18 · Money & operations

Accounting & the ledger

Everything the university collects or spends ends up here. Student billing, cashier receipts and procurement all post through one canonical ledger service, which is why the finance dashboard can say plainly that no screen writes to the books by a side door.

What it is for

Keeping the books: periods, journals, the ledger and the statements drawn from it.

Who can do it

Finance ManagerBursarDVC-Admin & FinanceInternal Auditor

Needed first

A chart of accounts
An open financial year and period
Posting rules mapping events to accounts

Where it ends

A trial balance that agrees, and financial statements drawn from it.

One ledger, one route in

The General Ledger and statements screen with account balances and period selection. — **General Ledger.** The canonical record. Every module that touches money posts here through one service — there is no second set of books.

An event happens→ A posting rule maps it to accounts→ The ledger service posts it→ Trial balance & statements

The Posting Rules screen mapping business events to debit and credit accounts. — **Posting Rules.** Which account is debited and which credited, for each kind of event. There is a simulation screen beside it — use it before changing a live rule.

Change a posting rule and you change the future, not the past

Entries already posted keep the accounts they were posted to. Correcting a mis-mapped rule therefore needs two acts: fix the rule so it is right from now on, and post a manual journal to correct what has already gone through. Doing only the first leaves a permanent gap.

Financial years and periods

The Financial Years screen listing years and their periods with open or closed status. — **Financial Years.** A year is divided into periods, and a period is either open or closed. Nothing posts into a closed period.

A closed period is the commonest “it will not save”

When a journal or a receipt refuses with a date error, check the period before you check anything else. The fix is either to date the entry into an open period, or — deliberately, with authority — to reopen the period. Reopening is an act with consequences for every report already issued from that period.

The Manual Journals screen listing journal entries with their lines, status and approval. — **Manual Journals.** For corrections and for entries no module raises. They are prepared and then approved, and they must balance before they will post.

The reports that matter

The Trial Balance report listing accounts with debit and credit totals. — **Trial Balance.** Run it before anything else. If it does not agree, no statement drawn from it is worth reading.

The General Ledger report showing transactions per account for a period. — **General Ledger report.** Every movement on an account for a period — the report to open when a balance is not what someone expected.

The finance reports index listing all available finance reports by category. — **All finance reports.** Statements, control reports, journal register, GL reconciliation, account inquiry, collections, debtors, sponsors, waivers and more.

Worked example

Closing a month

1	Cashier Sessions — every session for the month closed and signed off. An open session means uncounted cash
2	Collections Register against the bank statement. Investigate differences now, not at year end
3	Posting Exceptions — anything that failed to post. These are silent until you look
4	Trial Balance — it must agree before you go further
5	Post any correcting Manual Journals, get them approved, re-run the trial balance
6	GL Reconciliation and Control Reports
7	Financial Statements for the period
8	Close the period in Financial Years. After this, entries dated into it will refuse — which is the point

What is not in service yet

The finance sidebar is long, and not every entry on it is live. This is worth stating plainly so that nobody plans work around a screen that will not open.

A not-authorised page returned when opening the Receivables section. — **What an inactive section looks like.** `/admin/finance/receivables` refuses rather than showing an empty page.

Listed in the sidebar	State	Use instead
Receivables	Not in service — refuses	The Debtors and Student Balances reports
Payables	Not in service	Procurement supplier invoices
Budgeting	Not in service	—
Asset Management	Not in service	Inventory & stores for stock; assets are not yet tracked
Credit Notes / Debit Notes	Point at the Account Inquiry report	Manual journals, or a reversal

Why they are listed at all

The navigation reflects the finished shape of the module, and these sections activate as each phase goes live. It is better to know that now than to discover it during a year-end close.

If the books will not behave

Symptom	Cause	Fix
An entry refuses on its date	The period is closed	Financial Years — date it into an open period, or reopen deliberately
A journal will not post	It does not balance, or it is not approved	Both are required
The trial balance does not agree	Usually a posting exception nobody looked at	Posting Exceptions
An event posted to the wrong account	A posting rule is mis-mapped	Fix the rule and journal the correction
A sidebar section refuses to open	It is not in service	The table above
Two reports disagree	Different period or currency basis	Check the filters on both before assuming an error