Once the Cash Receipts Journal has been updated, posting your deposit total to the Checkbook Register, the only way to correct a mistake has been to reverse out the original entries and re-post the payments correctly. A lot of times, this is easier said than done!
And while this method of correcting mistakes does leave an audit trail, a lot of times customers just want to get the right numbers in their system and not worry about leaving behind evidence of data entry mistakes.
We have recently added a new feature that will unfinalize an entire Cash Receipt Journal. This will delete the journal entries to Cash In Bank and A/R Trade (and any miscellaneous income accounts, if any) and reset the posting status on the cash receipts entries so that you may edit or delete them before re-updating the Cash Receipts Journal.
To unfinalize a Cash Receipts Journal, first go to the Checkbook Register and find the deposit amount. Double click on the deposit transaction to open the Deposit Detail window:
Now hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the letter “U” (for “unfinalize”, of course) and the program will confirm that it is ok to unfinalize this cash receipts journal. Once you answer Yes, the transactions will be deleted and the payment records will be added back to the current batch Cash Receipts Journal.
There are a few things to keep in mind when using this option:
- You cannot unfinalize a deposit that is in a fiscal year that has been closed.
- The program will not let you unfinalize a deposit prior to the A/R Closing Date. If the accounting period has been closed, either you or your administrator will need to re-open the accounting period before you can unfinalize the deposit.
- The program will warn you if the deposit has been cleared on a bank statement. You can still unfinalize the deposit, but this will throw off your bank reconcilement reports. If you re-post the deposit, make sure you clear the new deposit entry for the correct statement period.
A new security setting has also been added that allows you to control access to the Deposit Detail window as well as block access to the Unfinalize option. Just add the “AP.ViewDepositDetail” view name to the user or group security grid. The Open checkbox will control whether or not the user/group will be able to open this window. (The other checkboxes have no effect, since records are not created/edited/saved/deleted on this window.) If you want a user or group to be able to unfinalize cash receipts journal, click on the View Settings… button and check the box in the Additional View Settings window.
For customers that always want an audit trail, and don’t want any users to use this feature, just add a security setting for the EVERYONE group, with the Open box checked and the Unfinalize Cash Receipts Journal box unchecked.
This new features is available in The Farmer’s Office and The Labor Contractor’s Office version 7.5.830 or newer, and in The Shipper’s Office and The Broker’s Office in version 7.3.500 or newer.