From chart of accounts to a closed month
How subledgers post to the ledger, what a manual journal is really for, and the checks a Cambodian SME must pass before a period can be closed.
A month that can be reopened was never closed
Plenty of organisations "close" a month by agreeing informally to stop posting to it. Then a late invoice arrives, somebody backdates it, and last month's reported figure quietly changes after it was reported. A close that means something has to be enforced, and reopening has to be an explicit, visible act.
What should already be in the ledger before you start
- Payroll for the period, from an approved and paid run
- Purchases received and vendor bills recorded
- Expense claims approved and paid
- Counter sales, stock movements, and depreciation for the period
Closing a period, and what stops you
The three checks before the close are the interesting part — each one exists because of a specific way a "closed" month later turned out not to be.
- 1Finance
Set up the chart of accounts, the year, and its periods
Periods are real objects with their own state, not just date ranges in a report filter. That is what makes "is March closed?" a question with a definite answer.
- 2Humaneti
Subledgers post themselves
Payroll, purchases, expenses, inventory movements, asset depreciation, and point-of-sale all reach the ledger from the transaction that caused them. Finance is reading operations rather than being handed a summary to key in.
- 3FinanceDraft → Posted
Manual journals are for what no module owns
Accruals, corrections, and opening balances. A journal is drafted, reviewed, then posted — and a posted journal is never deleted. Fixing one means posting a reversal, so the history of what was believed and when survives.
- 4Finance
Reconcile the bank before you trust the cash
The bank statement is the one figure in the accounts that a third party can confirm. Reconciling it is what turns the rest of the ledger from internally consistent into externally verified.
- 5Humaneti
Check one: earlier periods must be closed first
You cannot close June while May is open. Closing out of order is how a reopened earlier month silently restates a later one you already reported.
- 6Humaneti
Check two: no draft entries may be left behind
A draft journal in a closed period is a transaction in limbo — real enough that somebody wrote it, invisible enough that it is not in the numbers. The close refuses until every one is posted or discarded.
- 7Approver
Check three: approvals, and the closer is excluded
Distinct approvals must be on record before a period can be locked, and the person performing the close does not count toward them. One person cannot both approve and close — which is the whole meaning of segregation of duties, expressed as a rule rather than a policy nobody checks.
- 8FinanceClosed
Closed means closed — and reopening is visible
The period locks with a timestamp and the person who closed it. Reopening is possible but explicit: a recorded act with a name on it, rather than a period that was never really shut.