Correcting Mistakes After Posting

However careful you are, mistakes can be made when entering transactions. This section describes how you can make corrections while maintaining a proper audit trail.

Supervisor Authorization

Until a journal is posted, all of the transaction details can be amended or deleted.

If you want to add a separate procedure to authorize journals when they are entered, you can use the journal hold file to save journals until they are approved by another operator. You can retrieve held journals and, once authorized, they can be posted. Held transactions are treated as unposted, and are therefore not included in general reports.

Making Simple Amendments

Once a journal has been posted you can change the description, due date, and transaction analysis codes for a posted transaction using Account Allocations (ACA), assuming you have the necessary permission.

In addition to correcting errors, amending analysis is particularly useful if, for example, you reorganise your cost centre structure. The Amend in Account Allocation option in Analysis Dimensions (AND) allows you to specify whether analysis codes can be amended after posting. You can control access to this facility via operator groups, which are maintained using Security.

You can also change allocation markers. You can set the allocation marker to:

Allocated
Reconciled
Correction
Force Payment
Withhold Payment
0-9 for numeric allocations.

Transactions can be de-allocated subsequent to posting in Account Allocations. All changes made in Account Allocations must be posted before they are written to the ledger.

Amending Critical Transaction Information

Account Allocations does not allow you to amend the transaction date, transaction reference, debit/credit marker, and any of the transaction amount details. You can only change these critical details by entering correction transactions.

This can be done by reversing the incorrect entry and then entering the correct transactions manually in Ledger Entry (LEN).

To reverse the journal you can either enter the reverse journal manually or use Journal Reversal and Copy (JRC).

Concealing Correction Transactions

Correction transactions can be identified as such by assigning them with a Correction allocation marker. You can set this allocation marker using Account Allocations (ACA).

Note: You must set the Correction allocation marker on balancing transactions. This means that you must set this marker on at least two transactions with values that net to zero.

Transactions which have a Correction marker can be excluded from financial reports. You can use the Report Corrections option in Ledger Setup (LES) to specify whether correcting transactions are included or excluded from reports.

Payment Voiding

Payment Voiding (PYV) enables you to cancel or remove payments made in Payment Run or Payment Collection Run. You select the payment to cancel by identifying the payment reference, usually the cheque reference.

If a payment reference has not been generated, a dummy reference can be generated in Payment Documents to enable the transaction to be selected for reversal. You can choose to mark the original transactions that were paid with a Withhold allocation marker or you can leave the allocation marker blank.