Journal vouchers the audit-firm wayالقيود المحاسبية بأسلوب مكتب التدقيق

Almost everything an audit office enters arrives as a journal voucher. The screen is the same one Journal vouchers describes and How to create a journal voucher walks through step by step; what follows is the handful of habits that turn a pile of correct vouchers into books somebody else can read six months later.

1. Pick the type that matches the document

Type, at the top left of the voucher, decides what kind of movement you are recording. The list holds Vouchers, Loans, Manual Difference of Exchange, Payment Note, Receipt Note, Receipts Voucher, Payments Voucher, Credit Sales Voucher, Sales Return Voucher, Credit Purchase Voucher and Purchase Return Voucher.

Vouchers is the plain, everyday entry. The rest are there so that a document with a character of its own keeps it: a credit sale on Credit Sales Voucher, the goods that came back on Sales Return Voucher, a purchase return on Purchase Return Voucher, a debit or credit note on Payment Note or Receipt Note, money in and out on Receipts Voucher and Payments Voucher. Put a return, a discount or a note in under its own type rather than netting it off against the original entry: the tax and analysis reports read those types, and the totals they print are only right when each document went in as what it was.

2. The number, and the gaps in it

A saved voucher takes a number made of four parts - branch, year, type and sequence - so 001-2026-JV-1 is the first journal voucher of 2026 in branch 001. The same shape carries through every type, which is why a number identifies a document on its own, with no need to say which screen it came from.

Delete a voucher and its number stays out of the sequence: the numbers after it keep the values they already had, and the deleted one waits as a gap that can be filled later by a new voucher. That is deliberate. Numbers get written on paperwork that has already gone out to a client, so re-running the sequence to close a hole would quietly rename documents somebody else is holding. Fill the gap when you have something to put in it, or leave it open and explain it in your notes.

Date opens on today. You can enter a voucher dated ahead of today; you cannot enter one dated before the company's lock date.

3. Write the description so the entry reads itself

Description is where the audit trail is won or lost. Fill it in the same order every time: invoice number, counter-party, amount, payment method - for example «inv #123 telecom 100$ paid cash». An accountant reading the ledger a year from now can picture the source document from that line alone, without pulling the file.

Keep it to one transaction per voucher. Lumping a morning's unrelated postings into a single voucher saves a few keystrokes and costs you the ability to trace one of them later; every line then has to be told apart by amount, which is exactly the work the description was supposed to save. Reference is a second, shorter field for your own cross-reference - a file number, a batch, a client's own document number - and it can be left for later while you get the description right.

4. Correct by reversing once the period has been declared

While the period is still open and nothing has been filed, correct a voucher by opening it and editing it. Once the period has been declared to the tax authority, use Reverse on the voucher's own ribbon instead. Reverse writes a mirror entry, in the period you are standing in, that cancels the original; you then enter the corrected voucher beside it. The declared period keeps the totals that were declared, the correction lands where it can still be explained, and both documents stay visible to whoever reviews the file.

Posted: when an entry actually reaches the ledger explains what posting does to a voucher and why a corrected entry has to reach the ledger the same way the original did.

5. Mark what you have reviewed with Audited

Audited is a tick, carried on the voucher's own ribbon, that says a reviewer has been through this entry. It is a review mark and nothing else: an unticked voucher is still a perfectly normal voucher and still in the ledger. What the tick buys you is a filter - reports can be limited to audited entries, so the reviewer sees what is left to do rather than the whole year again - and, where an administrator has set it up that way, a lock on further edits to entries already signed off.

The same mark is reachable one line at a time from the Audit screen. Expand an account row there and its individual entries appear underneath, with an Audit... column on the left carrying a checkbox per line - so a reviewer working down an account's movements can tick them off in place, without opening each voucher.

Checking your books: Audit and Advanced search covers the rest of that screen - the colour rules, the filters and the drill-down back to the source voucher.

6. Two ready print layouts

The voucher prints from its own ribbon, and Report selection beside the print button chooses the layout. Two are ready to use: a wide, landscape one that carries the full set of columns across the page, and a tall, portrait one with a shorter column set. Pick whichever suits the file the client keeps; it is one choice in a list, with nothing to design.