Checking your books: Audit and Advanced searchمراجعة دفاترك: التدقيق والبحث المتطوّر

Once entries exist, two questions come up over and over. Does anything look wrong? and where is that entry? Libra has a screen for each, both under General ledger, and neither of them changes anything - they only look.

1. Audit: every balance on one page

Open Audit. It lists every account that carries a balance, one row per account and currency - the same account held in two currencies is two rows, because those are two separate balances.

Expand an account's row (▸) and its individual posted entries appear beneath it. Each entry line carries its own Audited tick, so a line can be marked as reviewed right from this screen - not only from the voucher's own ribbon, which carries the same tick.

2. The colours are the point of this screen

The Apply Conditional Formatting panel has four boxes, and each is written in its own colour: Should have Zero Balance, Should be Debit, Should be Credit and Should Be Debit Or Credit. Libra already knows from the chart of accounts which way each account is supposed to lean. Tick a box and every account that breaks that expectation is painted in that colour.

Look at the 531 Cash row in USD in the picture above. It is green - the Should be Debit colour - and its balance reads (788,500,000), which is a credit. A cash account in credit says you have paid out more than ever went in, which cannot be true of a real cash box. Something is missing, or something was posted to the wrong account.

That is how to use this screen: do not read every line, read the coloured ones.

3. Narrowing what you look at

Filter options, top left:

• Show zero balance accounts - off to begin with, so accounts that have settled to nothing stay out of your way. Tick it when you are looking for an account that should have a balance and does not.
• Show All Entries - widens the rows behind each balance.
• LBP / USD / Account currency - Account currency shows each account in the currency it is actually held in. Choose LBP or USD instead to convert everything into one, which is how you compare accounts that are not held in the same money.
• From date / To date - the balances as they stood over a period, rather than as they stand today.

4. Monthly balances: how a balance got that way

Select an account in the grid and open Monthly balances at the bottom. It breaks that one account down over time - an Opening line, a line per month with movement, First, Second and Third Quarter rollups sitting alongside the monthly ones, and Whole Period - in the account's own currency and in both company currencies.

This is the follow-up question to a colour. The grid tells you this account looks wrong; the monthly breakdown tells you when it went wrong, which is usually enough to find the entry.

5. Advanced search: finding one entry

Open Advanced search. Fill in what you know, leave the rest empty, and press Search.

It searches lines, not vouchers. Each result row is one line of one voucher, so an entry that touched three accounts appears three times - once per account, with that line's own debit or credit. That is what makes it useful: you can search for the account, not just for the document.

What you can search on:

• Accounting info - Type, Number, Reference, an exact Debit or Credit amount, Currency, the account and Auxiliary pickers, Description, Check number and Bank.
• Three separate date ranges, and they are not the same question. Transaction date is the date the entry belongs to; Value Date is when a cheque falls due; Create date is the day somebody typed it. Looking for "what did we enter last Tuesday" is a Create date search.
• Cost centers selection - Projects, Sections and Operations.
• Show Voucher / Amount - restrict to debits only, credits only, one currency, or an amount between two figures.

Searching on a cheque number is often the fastest route. If a customer rings about a cheque, the Check number box finds every line it appears on in one step.

6. Which screen for which question

7. Neither of them changes anything

Both screens only read. Nothing on either one edits, deletes or posts an entry - so they are safe to explore, and safe to hand to somebody who is checking your work rather than doing it.