Ledger

Most ledger entries are written for you when documents post. This page covers the entries you create yourself or run on a schedule: manual journal entries, opening balances, fixed asset depreciation, currency revaluation, deferred revenue, and group eliminations.

For fiscal years, the period lock, and the year-end close, see Closing the books.

Journal entries

Accounting → Journal entries lists every journal entry in the selected company: the ones documents created and the ones you entered. The Source column shows where each came from, for example Invoice, Bill, Payment Entry, Depreciation, or Manual. Cancellation entries are marked Cancellation and opening entries Opening. Click an entry to see its lines; Open source document jumps to the invoice, payment, or landed cost that created it.

Create a manual entry

Use a manual journal entry for anything no document covers, such as an accrual, a correction between accounts, or paying withholding tax to the authority.

Click New entry.
Leave Entry type on Normal journal entry and set the Posting date.
Add at least two lines. Each line has an Account, a Debit or a Credit, and an optional User remark.
On a receivable or payable account, choose the Party type and Party so the amount belongs to a customer or supplier.
Check that Difference is zero. Balance difference puts any gap on the last empty line.
Click Save draft, then Post entry.

For example, to accrue 2,000 of electricity used in September but billed in October (using an accrued liabilities account you have added to your chart):

Account	Debit	Credit
Utilities Expense	2,000
Accrued Liabilities		2,000

Posting is checked against the rules that apply to every entry: debits must equal credits, the date must be on or after the accounting start date, outside any locked or closed period, and inside an enabled fiscal year. Tiny rounding differences are posted to the rounding account automatically.

Correct a posted entry

Posted entries cannot be edited or deleted. Click Cancel entry to post a cancellation that offsets it, dated today; the original stays in the ledger with the status Reversed. Then post the correct entry.

Only manual entries can be cancelled from this page. An entry created by a document is corrected by cancelling or voiding that document. A manual entry cannot be cancelled while it is part of a bank deposit, matched in Banking, or funding an active prepaid expense schedule.

Drafts can be edited, or removed with Delete draft. Posted entries keep their number; deleted drafts leave a gap in the numbering.

Opening balances

Opening balances bring your books to the right starting position: what customers still owed you, what you still owed suppliers, cash, stock, assets, and other balances as of the accounting start date. Enabling Accounting does not copy any past activity into the books, so this is where your history enters.

Open Accounting → Opening balances (under Configuration). It works as a cutover workspace: it stays open while you enter balances, and you close it with Complete cutover when everything reconciles.

Every opening entry is balanced against Temporary Opening, a clearing account, and posts no revenue or expense. When everything is in, move what is left in Temporary Opening to Capital or Retained Earnings with an opening journal entry.

Bring in unpaid invoices and bills

If your invoices and bills were already in Workstation before you enabled Accounting, you do not need to re-enter them. Under Bring in unpaid invoices and bills, the page shows how many Customer invoices and Supplier bills dated before the start date were still unpaid on that day, with their totals, and how many are Already brought in.

Click Bring them in and confirm. For each document, only the amount still owed on the start date is posted, to Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable against Temporary Opening. The document keeps its real due date, so aging stays correct. Documents are processed 100 at a time with a progress count.

An invoice that was unpaid on the start date but paid afterwards still comes in, then shows as paid once its later payment posts.
Walk-in sales without a customer are left out, because there is no customer to carry a balance for.
It is safe to run again: documents already brought in are skipped.
It is only available while the cutover is open.

Opening documents

While the cutover is open, you can also create opening documents one by one. Click Customer balances or Supplier balances to open a New opening invoice or New opening bill, dated the day before the start date.

Any invoice or bill dated before the start date is treated as an opening document while the cutover is open: when you post it, only its outstanding amount posts as an opening balance against Temporary Opening, with no revenue or expense. A payment dated before the start date reduces that opening balance. Opening documents show an Opening badge in lists and on their detail page. Opening invoices are not reported to ZATCA automatically, because they were normally reported by your previous system; submit one manually from the invoice if it still needs reporting.

Update stock is not allowed on an opening document. Enter stock with Stock on hand instead.
After Complete cutover, a document dated before the start date is rejected, because it could never reach the books. Date it on or after the start date, or reopen the cutover.

Other opening activity

Row	How it is entered
Customer and supplier advances	An opening payment, left unallocated
Stock on hand	Add opening stock: location, product, quantity, and unit cost
Fixed assets	An opening asset in Fixed assets, with depreciation already booked
Other balance-sheet accounts	An Opening balances journal entry for cash, tax, loans, equity, and other balances
Mid-year year-to-date activity	A Mid-year YTD opening journal entry, which may include income and expense accounts

Opening journal entries are fixed to the start date. An Opening balances entry cannot use income or expense accounts, and receivables and payables must come from opening invoices or bills rather than journal lines.

Reconcile to the source trial balance

Enter the closing trial balance from your old system under Reconcile to source Trial Balance, with a Source reference. For each account, the page compares expected and actual debits and credits and shows the Variance.

Complete the cutover

Click Complete cutover when every variance is zero, the source trial balance balances, and Temporary Opening is exactly zero. After that, no more opening entries or opening documents can be added. Reopen is possible as long as the period lock is before the start date.

Fixed assets and depreciation

Accounting → Fixed assets is your register of long-lived assets, such as vehicles, computers, and machinery. It spreads each asset’s cost over its useful life as depreciation.

Add an asset

Click New asset and enter:

Asset code, Asset name, Acquisition date, and Available for use date.
Gross cost and Salvage value (what it will be worth at the end).
Useful life (months) and Posting frequency (months).
Method: Straight line or Declining balance (with an Annual declining rate %).
The Fixed asset account, Accumulated depreciation account, and Depreciation expense account.
Acquisition credit (optional): the account to credit for the purchase. Leave it empty when a bill or journal entry already recorded the purchase; otherwise the asset posts debit Fixed asset, credit this account.

For example, a 36,000 vehicle with 6,000 salvage value over 60 months, straight line, monthly, depreciates by 500 a month.

For assets you already owned before the start date, use Opening balances → Fixed assets. It adds the accumulated depreciation at cutover and the periods already booked.

Post depreciation

Depreciation posts automatically on each scheduled date (see Scheduled entries). Each posts debit Depreciation expense, credit Accumulated depreciation. Post due depreciation posts everything due up to today straight away, for all active assets.

The list shows each asset’s cost, accumulated depreciation, and book value, with totals for the register.

Dispose of an asset

Open the asset and click Dispose asset. Choose the Disposal date and method (Sale, Scrap, or Write off), the Sale proceeds and the account they were paid into, and the Gain / loss account. Workstation first posts any depreciation due up to the disposal date, then removes the asset’s cost and accumulated depreciation and posts the gain or loss. A disposal can be cancelled; the reversal is dated today.

Scheduled entries

Fixed-asset depreciation and prepaid expense recognition follow schedules. Workstation posts them for you once a day (at 03:00 UTC):

Each depreciation row posts on its own scheduled date.
Prepaid recognition posts at each month end (or the schedule’s end date).
Entries for the same asset or schedule post in order. If one cannot post, for example because its month is locked, the later ones wait.
Nothing is ever posted into a locked or closed period.

Turn this off with Post scheduled entries automatically → Only when I post them under Accounting settings → General. The manual buttons (Post due depreciation, Recognize through today) work either way.

When an entry cannot post

Problems are listed under Needs attention on the Accounting Overview, with a link to the asset or schedule and a Retry button. Each person who can fix a problem gets one in-app notification per company per run: owners and Accounting administrators for everything, Ledger managers for depreciation, and Purchases managers for prepaid expenses. Everyone notified needs an Accounting seat (or, on older plans, area managers need their Accounting access switched on). They are notified again only if the reason changes. The usual fix is to adjust the period lock or the fiscal year, then click Retry.

Currency revaluation

Balances in a foreign currency, such as a USD receivable or a USD bank account, are recorded in the base currency at the rate on the day of each transaction. When rates move, their base-currency value is out of date. Revaluation restates them at a closing rate, usually at month end.

Open Accounting → Currency revaluation.
Choose the Posting date, the Currency, and the Closing rate.
Click Preview revaluation. The table shows each account and party with its foreign balance, carrying value, revalued value, and adjustment.
Click Post revaluation.

Revaluation covers foreign-currency receivables, payables, and bank or cash accounts. The adjustment posts to FX Gain/Loss as an unrealized gain or loss. It is not reversed automatically: a later revaluation starts from the already revalued amount and only posts the further change. A posted revaluation cannot be cancelled.

Deferred revenue

Deferred revenue is money you have invoiced for a service you have not delivered yet, such as a 12-month membership paid up front. It is recorded as a liability and recognized as income over the service period.

On an invoice line, tick Defer over service period and choose the start and end dates. See Sales. The Deferred revenue account comes from the line, the product or category default, or the company default.
Membership sales defer automatically when Deferred revenue is set to Auto for memberships under Accounting settings → General. The same setting chooses Prorate by days or Prorate by months.

When the invoice posts, the line’s revenue goes to Deferred Revenue and a recognition schedule is created. Recognition moves each period’s share to the income account. It runs automatically on the first day of each month for the previous month, and you can run it at any time with Recognize through today in Accounting settings → General. Voiding the invoice reverses what was recognized and cancels the schedule.

Intercompany and eliminations

If your organization has several companies in one group, some of their transactions are with each other, for example one company charging the other a management fee. Each company records its side in its own books. Group eliminations remove those internal balances from the consolidated reports so the group is not reporting income it earned from itself.

Set up relationships

Open Accounting settings → Intercompany and click New relationship. Choose the two companies and, for each side, its Due from related entities, Due to related entities, Intercompany income, and Intercompany expense accounts. The defaults use the system accounts for these purposes.

Workstation does not post intercompany transactions for you. Record each company’s side with its normal documents or journal entries, using these accounts.

Record eliminations

Under Elimination journals, click New elimination, choose the company pair and date, and enter lines against group accounts in the group’s reporting currency. Save draft, then Post. Reverse posts an opposite journal on the date you choose.

Elimination journals live at group level only. They never appear in either company’s general ledger. Consolidated reports apply them only when both companies in the pair are included.