When is a Journal In Balance?

A journal can only be posted to Financials when it is in balance.

A journal is in balance when:

  • The debit and credit values on the journal transactions balance in the base currency.
  • The debit and credit values on the journal transactions for each accounting period balance.

In a multi-currency environment, a journal may also be forced to balance in all, or some, of the additional currency values that are in use for the business unit. The additional currency values are the transaction currency (value 2), the second base/reporting currency (value 3) and the fourth currency (value 4). This is determined by the balancing rules defined in Business Unit Setup.

Optionally, a journal may also be required to balance by any of the following, depending on the Balance By option in Ledger Setup (LES) or Ledger Import (LIM):

  • Transaction reference
  • Any of the ten transaction analysis dimensions
  • Transaction date (Ledger Import only)
Note: There is an exception to these balancing rules for posting journals to memo accounts, which do not need to balance, and slightly different rules apply to posting provisional journals.

The journal balancing rules, established in Business Unit Setup, determine:

  • Whether the base currency values can be balanced automatically.
  • The balancing adjustment, or suspense, accounts.
  • The largest allowable balancing amount.
  • Which of the currency values must balance and how they must be balanced.

These rules apply to journals entered using either Ledger Entry or Ledger Import. If a journal does not balance, it cannot be posted in Ledger Entry or imported in Ledger Import.

Note:  Ledger Import can optionally force journals to balance by posting errors to a suspense account.