Standing Journal Tables

Standing journals are similar to "normal" general journal batches except for one important difference: standing journals cannot be assigned to a specific accounting period and they cannot be directly posted to the general ledger master file.

Standing journal batches are also sometimes referred to as accrual batches but they can also be used for purposes other than the posting of accruals. Standing journals are useful in allowing you to keep a series of regularly posted journals handy, that can be transferred to general journals (and then assigned to a specific accounting period) and posted. For example, in many companies the opening stock/closing stock series of journals used to calculate cost of sales needs to be performed at the end of each month. A batch created under standing journals could contain these details. The actual opening and closing stock balances would still need to be entered each month, but this would only involve editing existing journals, rather than inputting them from scratch. The batch would then be re-totalled, "copied" to general journal batches (and during this process assigned to an accounting period), and posted.

The following screen shows the entry of a standing journal batch.

Creating a new batch. Fields include:

Batch no

The batch number assigned to the batch. The number must be unique; it cannot be the same as any batch currently in standing journals. This number is issued automatically by CAPITAL GL Controller, however, you can override it if you wish by entering a different number. The next number issued for future batches will be the number following the number assigned to the most recently created batch. Since standing journals cannot be directly posted, this number does not normally end up in your general ledger audit trail history report. Usually standing journal batch numbers are issued the identifier "st" before the number to differentiate them more clearly from general journals. Once a standing journal is copied to general journals, the newly created general journal batch is assigned the next available general journal number.

Batch numbers may be up to 9 digits in length and can be of mixed alpha-numeric type. The alphabetic portion of the number must be at the beginning. The following are valid transaction numbers: 1, 931, st2311, adj23011, 99999, test1, openx225. These numbers are invalid: 123b, 12e22, c100c, 99abc.

Period no

Not applicable. This field cannot be changed as standing journals are not assigned to specific accounting periods.

Description

The main description or title of the batch. Naming your batches is optional but highly recommended.

Reference

An additional reference or secondary description for the batch. This field is optional.

Entered by

The operator who created the batch. Optional.

Control amount

This represents the total of either all debit or all credit transactions that should be entered. Enter an amount here if you already know the total that your journals should add up to. For example, the total you have banked. If the control total does not match the debit or credit total CAPITAL will warn you. You may post batches that do not have a balanced control amount, but the posting process will warn you of this situation and will ask you to confirm the posting.

Created

The date the batch was created. This will default to the current system date for new batches.

Year

The financial year that this batch relates to is not applicable for standing journals.

Last update

Automatically updated by CAPITAL, this field will be blank if the creation and last update dates are the same which is the case when a new batch is entered. Otherwise the date of the last change made to the batch is stored here.

Total entries

The total number of journals entered in the batch. This field is calculated automatically and cannot be edited.

Total credits

The total value of all credits entered. This field is calculated automatically and cannot be edited.

Total debits

The total value of all debits entered. This field is calculated automatically and cannot be edited.

See: Entering Journals for more information on journals entries. Note that you cannot assign a date to individual journals while in standing journals mode. Standing journals do not relate to any specific accounting period.

Copying standing journals

Use the copy button to transfer standing journals to general journal batches. A new general journal batch will be created based on the standing journal or journals copied. The currently selected batch or all marked batches may be copied.

The standing journal copy process will also prompt you for the transfer into period number. This will default to the current period. If you need to create a general journal batch for a different accounting period, be sure to change the "transfer into period" number.

A newly copied standing journal batch will be assigned to the current financial year and all journal entries within the batch will be issued the date of the last day within the specified period. For example, if the last day of period 9 is "31/09/97" then all journals will be assigned this date.

General or system journals created in a particular financial year cannot be posted to a different financial year. One way of getting around this restriction is to transfer the batch to standing journals. (If you wish to do this with a systems batch then you will need to transfer it to general journals and then standing journals.) Once it is copied into standing journals you can copy it back out, and it will be assigned to the current financial year automatically. This can prove useful if after end of year roll-over you have to continue to post correcting entries to the last financial period of the old year, and also wish to update the opening balances of the following year with these changes.