The joys of closing! You are reviewing your journal entries at month end and you realize that some corrections are necessary. The journals are in temporary status. But why can’t you make changes to some of the temporary journals?

Please don’t turn immediately to modifying the tables directly.  Remember, a SQL or GMAINT table update, doesn’t take into consideration the program’s business rules. What are business rules? Business rules ensure data integrity such as accounts are valid, BPs exist, payment types are correct, etc. A direct update doesn’t automatically update related/dependent fields or tables. If you update an amount on a journal, the balance table won’t be updated. Your data will be out of sync. Always make changes through the frontend where business rules are followed.

Let’s head over to the Online help center for Financials, Journals, Journal entry and see what it says about modifying fields:

In order to guarantee the integrity of the journal data originating in other modules, certain fields cannot be modified: for instance, a payment sent to a given bank prevents the modification of the associated account; to cancel such a transaction, it is first necessary to cancel the payment (this reverses the journal), then re-enter the payment for a new bank account. The possibility to modify some fields can also be subject to whether or not the journal entry has been finally validated or not. The table shown below lists the fields that cannot be modified for journals originating in modules other than accounting:

As you can see, some changes can’t be made even when a journal is in Temporary status to preserve referential integrity.  For those journals that you can’t modify, you have the option to reverse the journal, reclass the balance to another account or go to the source module to create a transaction which reverses the original.

Can you delete a problem journal? First, the GASSUP parameter (Delete accounting entries) must be set to Yes. This is found under Setup, General parameter, Chapter TC (Common Data), Group INV (Invoicing rules). There are certain conditions that must be met:

• The journal is in the Accounting module and it has been entered manually.
• The journal entry status is not final.
• None of the lines are matched or reconciled.
• No VAT amount has been declared.
• Keep in mind, that some countries do not allow the deletion of transactions to preserve sequential integrity. Deletion won’t be an option in this case

 As long as we are on the topic of changing journal entries, let’s look at changing dimensions on journals in Final Status. To be able to change dimension while in final status, head to the Dimension types, under Setup, Organizational structure. Select Change final entries.

 Next, we will go to Setup, Users, Users and select the User code for the user that you want to give the ability to make change to dimensions in final status. On the Parameters tab, select Chapter / CPT, Group AUZ. Change the Value of  CNTANA  (Analytical control) to No. Like STOADMIN (see The Power of the STOADMIN Parameter), you should consider carefully who you want to have access to this feature.

Hope this information helps you with your closes.

Stay safe!