Post a manual journal entry

Personas: Accountant (writes and posts the entry; anyone in the Accountant group can post) · Modules: Journal & Posting, Chart of Accounts Write a balanced memorial order — debit and credit lines against your chart of accounts — review it from the Inbox, and post it. Once posted it gets its JE number and becomes final.

Before you start: your chart of accounts must be adopted — the shipped national chart arrives all inactive, so activate the accounts you use (and add your own analytical leaf accounts) in Chart of Accounts first. Only leaf accounts are postable — synthetic groups never appear in the line pickers.

1. Write the entry — Accountant

1. In the Accounting sidebar group, open Journal Entries and click New Journal Entry.
2. Fill the Date (the accounting date), the Company, optionally a Reason (Sale, Purchase, Accrual, Correction, ... — extendable from the picker) and the source paper's Document number / date as free text. Save — the entry appears as DRAFT, its title still a temporary placeholder (the real JE number comes at posting).
3. Add the lines with the items table's Add button. Each line: pick the Account (leaf accounts only) and set exactly one of Debit or Credit — a line with both, or neither, is refused with "A line is either a debit or a credit - set exactly one side". Optionally tag the line's Customer or Supplier (the counterparty subledger) and a foreign-currency amount and rate.
4. The read-only totals footer keeps the running Debit total and Credit total — make them equal before you try to post.

2. Post it — Accountant (Inbox)

1. Every new entry raises a Post task in the Accountant group's Inbox (and inline on the entry). Its form shows Number, Date, Company, Reason, Debit total, Credit total, Status with Post / Reject buttons.
2. Click Post. Two gates guard it: the entry must balance ("Debits and credits must balance") and must have at least one line ("Post requires at least one line"). If a gate fails, the task completion refuses and the entry stays DRAFT — fix the lines and post again.
3. On success the entry flips to POSTED and its sequential JE number (shared "Journal Entry" series) replaces the placeholder in the title.

3. It is now immutable — Accountant

1. A POSTED entry is final: any attempt to edit or delete it is refused. Corrections are new entries, never edits.
2. Corrections follow the red storno convention: a reversal entry carries the same lines with negative amounts on the same debit/credit sides — never swapped sides — so the trial balance turnovers stay honest. The reversal points at the original via its Storno reference.
3. The automatic storno: when an issued sales invoice that was posted to the ledger is voided, its red storno appears by itself — a new DRAFT entry with the negated lines, linked to the reversed entry through Storno, waiting in your Inbox with the same Post task as any automatic entry. (If the invoice was never posted, voiding it creates nothing.)
4. Manual stornos are hand-written for now: there is no Reverse button on a posted entry — you write the negative-amount entry yourself and set its Storno reference to the original.

What happened behind the scenes

• Status path: DRAFT → POSTED (Post) or CANCELLED (Reject); posting stamps the JE number.
• The balance and at-least-one-line checks gate the POSTED transition itself — an entry can never reach the ledger unbalanced. Only POSTED entries count in the Trial Balance and the counterparty balance reports.

Variations and refusals

• Reject on the Post task cancels the entry (CANCELLED) instead of posting it.
• Editing or deleting a POSTED entry refuses — the entry is immutable.
• Recurring orders: save a template (Entry Templates) and use Create Entry on it — the header is prefilled; the lines are re-added on the new draft for now.

See also

• Journal & Posting module · Chart of Accounts module · Issue a sales invoice (the void that triggers the automatic storno)