GP Life Hack #121 - Keep your AP & AR in balance with your General Ledger

Posted by Shawn Dorward

I know your team works hard… day in and day out… and at month end, you reconcile your Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable sub ledger to your GL Trial Balance with an optimistic approach that never seems to really pay off.  No matter how hard you try, there is always a reconciling adjustment needed in order to balance…  UGH!  Whether it’s a penny, 1,000.00 or 61,312.76… it’s downright frustrating.

What is causing this variance?  Usually it is a journal entry.  We all love them, but let’s be honest… not everyone makes journal entries with the same level of confidence as you do.  Let’s get this game of ‘tug of war’ fixed once and for all!

GP Life Hack #121

Here’s a little GP Life Hack that could save you hours and hours of research.  By using a setting on your Dynamics GP account maintenance window, you can restrict non system entries to certain accounts, specifically your AP or AR accounts.  After all, in order to balance the sub ledger to the general ledger, there should be strict continuity…. Right?  RIGHT!  So let’s get things in balance and keep them there once and for all.

So how do we do it?  It’s really simple actually.  Before someone has the opportunity to throw a wrench into the mix, or after you FINALLY get things balanced, prevent damage but going to Cards/Financial/Accounts and turn OFF, the often overlooked function, ‘Allow Account Entry’. 

Now, if a user tried to create a journal entry to that account, they will get the error below.

That’s it! Wait… that’s it?  YES!  No longer will someone be allowed to accidently post a JE to those sub module accounts.  Maybe it’s via transposing digits, untimely attempts to reconcile,  or let’s face it,  sometimes we just inherit things that are a mess!  It will be a thing of the past and running your open trial balances and reconciling to your general ledger will be a breeze.

Oh, and just a little tip (off the record) - this account setting can easily be undone in the event that you REALLY need to post that journal entry.  It’s just a quick click of the box!  Just don’t forget to uncheck it after the Journal has been posted.  This might be a helpful approach to use while getting things in balance – at least in the meantime no one can post additional journal entries to make the muddy water worse.

Now… if we can only figure out a way to lock budgets so they don’t get modified.  Click here to read a post highlighting this little gem as well!

---