Back office (ERP)¶
Cortex is not a bank that bolts on an accounting package. The enterprise back office (procurement, sales, inventory, projects, planning) runs on the same ledger as the banking side. A supplier invoice and a customer's card payment land in the same books, under the same rules.
Capability-gated
The ERP sections appear only where the deployment carries them. A banking-only institution never sees these screens; an accounting deployment sees these and not the banking ones. What you see depends on your institution's edition and your role.
The one rule to understand¶
ERP modules do not post arbitrary debits and credits. Instead each module emits a business event (supplier invoice approved, goods received, cash receipt recorded) and a shared posting-rules engine turns that event into a balanced journal, choosing the right accounts. Two consequences follow, and they explain a lot of the behaviour in these pages:
- Subledgers drive; they don't double-post. Sales, procurement and fulfilment orchestrate other subledgers (inventory, receivables, payables) rather than adding their own posting path.
- The point of no return is the event. Approving an invoice, issuing it, delivering goods: these are the moments that post. Before them you can still amend; after them you correct with a new document.
Dimensions¶
Banking postings carry two hard-coded dimensions (branch, counterparty branch). ERP postings can carry up to eight analytical dimensions (legal entity, department, cost centre, project, funding source, and more), so the same journal can be sliced by project or cost centre without a separate reporting system. See Planning & dimensions.
The modules¶
- Procure to pay: suppliers, requisitions, purchase orders with three-way match, payables and payment runs.
- Order to cash: customers and credit control, sales orders, fulfilment, receivables and cash allocation.
- Inventory & costing: the item master, stock on hand, warehousing, standard and landed costing, and manufacturing.
- Assets, projects & expenses: the fixed-asset register, maintenance, employee expenses, and capital projects and grants.
- Planning & dimensions: budgets and commitment control, forecast scenarios, and the analytical dimension hierarchy.
- Close & consolidation: accounting periods, month- and year-end close, group consolidation, and fiscal compliance.
- Cash & bank reconciliation: bank accounts, receipts and payments, and matching the bank statement.
Reporting¶
Financial statements come from the same ledger the banking side uses. The framework is IFRS as issued by the IASB; the income statement follows IFRS 18 (with the mandatory operating profit and profit before financing and income taxes subtotals), with a per-entity classification policy. The Reporting & Close group produces the trial balance, profit & loss, balance sheet, prudential returns and the report library. See Day & period close.