Ledger & day book¶
Everything ends here. Every movement in Cortex (a card payment, a loan repayment, a supplier invoice, a payroll run) becomes a balanced set of debits and credits in one journal. This page covers the chart of accounts, posting a journal, and reading the day book.
Where: the General Ledger & Finance group.
The chart of accounts¶
General Ledger & Finance → Chart of accounts is the tree of accounts everything posts to. Codes are six digits, grouped by class:
| Class | Accounts | Normal balance |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Assets | Debit |
| 2 | Liabilities | Credit |
| 3 | Equity | Credit |
| 4 | Income | Credit |
| 5 | Expenses | Debit |
| 9 | Off-balance-sheet | None |
Two distinctions matter:
- Header vs detail. Header accounts group; only detail (postable) accounts can be posted to.
- Control accounts and sub-ledgers. A control account (say, customer deposits) is backed by a sub-ledger of the individual accounts. The sub-ledger always sums to its control, per branch.
Accounting rules (also in this group) bind the bank's posting roles to specific GL accounts, so modules post to the right place without hard-coding account numbers.
Posting a journal¶
General Ledger & Finance → Journals has three tabs:
Post entry captures a manual journal: a narration and reference, a posting date, an optional value date, a day-book category, and the debit and credit lines (each a postable account, a direction and an amount). A live indicator shows Balanced ✓ or the residual per currency: debits must equal credits, in every currency, across at least two lines. Submitting sends it for authorisation. Manual journals are maker-checker ("Journal captured. Sent to Approvals for checker authorization.").
Batch stages several entries and posts them atomically: all or nothing.
Entries is the day book itself (see below).
Reading the day book¶
The Entries tab is a register of everything posted. Columns include the sequence number, the reference (reversals are tagged), the category, the posting date, the value date (flagged when it differs from the posting date), when it posted, and the status. Expand a row to see its debit and credit lines.
Every entry is stamped with a day-book category (General, Adjustment, Accrual, and so on) so the shared ledger, used by both banking and the back office, can be filtered into day books for reporting and reconciliation. Use the category filter to focus on one day book.
Two row actions:
- Value date correction (
ledger:back-value): re-stamps the economic value date. No money moves; it is refused for FX-translated entries and outside configured windows, and recorded on a correction registry. - Reverse (
journal:reverse): posts a compensating mirror entry. It is itself maker-checker.
How balances are found¶
Balances are projections of the immutable journal: the journal is the source of truth, balances are computed from it. When a figure looks wrong, you can drill down: statement caption → natural account → branch → sub-ledger account → journal entry → posting.
Key terms¶
- Day-book category
- The tag on each entry that sorts it into a day book (General, Accrual, Adjustment, …) for reporting and reconciliation.
- Control account / sub-ledger
- A summary GL account and the detailed ledger behind it. The sub-ledger always reconciles to the control.
- Value date vs posting date
- The value date is when a movement is economically effective; the posting date is when it was booked.
Roles that do this work¶
| Task | Permission | Typical role |
|---|---|---|
| Read the chart / journals | gl:read, journal:read |
Finance Officer, Auditor |
| Post a journal (four eyes) | journal:post |
Finance Officer |
| Reverse an entry (four eyes) | journal:reverse |
Finance Officer |
| Correct a value date | ledger:back-value |
Financial Controller |
| Manage the chart / periods | gl:manage |
Financial Controller |