Use Reverse
On Finance › New Ledger › Ledger Journals, each posted entry has a Reverse button. There is deliberately no edit and no delete.
Reverse writes a second entry that is the mirror image of the first: everything debited is credited and everything credited is debited. The two cancel out, so the accounts end up exactly where they would have been had the entry never happened. Then post the correct entry.
Both entries stay on the screen for ever. The original is marked Reversed and greyed; the correcting entry sits alongside it. Anyone looking later can see what was posted, that it was corrected, when, and by whom.
Why not simply allow an edit?
In the original finance module you can — a posted voucher's amount, account and date can all be rewritten in place with nothing recorded. If a figure was 900 last month and reads 400 today, there is no way to tell whether it was corrected, by whom, or what it used to say. Every accounting system that has to stand up to an audit works by reversal for this reason.
Worth knowing
- A journal can only be reversed once. If the button has gone, it has already been done — look for the reversal near it.
- The reversal is dated today, not on the original date, so it lands in an open period. Correcting inside a period already closed and reported on would change a figure somebody has seen.
- Both entries count. A reversal does not remove the original, it offsets it — your reports show the pair netting to nothing, which is correct.
- You cannot post into a closed period. Reverse in the current open one, or reopen the closed period from Ledger Periods & Year End (reopening is recorded).