Nominal Ledger
The module everything else converges on. Sales, purchases, stock, payroll all live in their own modules, but the trace of every operation lands here, in transactions. So the question "where did this figure in the report come from" always has an answer, and that answer is a specific document.
The module's defining trait: the ledger is hardly ever keyed by hand. Postings are made by the documents of other modules; a manual transaction is the exception, for things no document describes.
Video walkthrough: Reports in ERPJS step by step — sales and profit, profit and loss, who owes you, what you owe.
The route: from document to reporting
Document (invoice, shipment, payment, payroll)
↓ posts itself, according to settings
Transaction: Dr account / Cr account + objects
↓
Trial balance, general ledger, balance sheet, P&L
- Chart of accounts — the foundation. Every account has a type (asset, liability, equity, income, expense) that decides how it behaves in reports.
- Account Usage — the table of "which operation lands on which account". This is where documents take their default accounts from when nothing is set on item or partner cards.
- Transactions — the result. A posting is balanced by definition: debits equal credits, or the document will not post.
- Reports read those records from different angles: the trial balance for balances and turnover, the Nominal Ledger Report for movement on an account, the Financial Result for profit and loss.
At period end, closing periods carries the result forward and closes the accounts, while closing changes stops anyone editing what has been closed.
What is worth understanding
An object is the posting's second coordinate. Besides the account, each line can carry objects: a department, a project, an employee, a channel. The account says what kind of money this is, the object says whose it is. Hence the balance by objects: the same amounts in a dimension the chart of accounts does not have.
Analytical control forces objects to be filled in. The object type control settings say: this account requires an object of that type. From then on a document without one simply will not post — the simplest way of not ending up with "expenses in general" instead of one department's expenses.
Posting can be switched off. Records from Subsystems has a switch per document type. Useful while migrating data, dangerous in day-to-day work: documents will be approved and the books will never see them.
Currency is two numbers on every line. The amount in the document's currency and the amount in the base one. Rates come from exchange rates (filled by the central bank rates service), and the differences on payment and revaluation land on the accounts from the FX difference accounts settings. Which accounts are never revalued is set by non-monetary accounts.
A budget is not a document but a plan to compare against. Budgets with their keys and classes live apart from postings; the Financial Report Builder shows plan and actual side by side. Revised budgets hold the corrected plan as a separate record: the original stays, and you can compare against either.
Where to start in a new database
- Base currency — set once and for good.
- Chart of accounts — standard or your own; add account classifications and synthetic accounts if needed.
- Account Usage — so documents know where to post; alongside it VAT and payment methods.
- Objects and object types — if you need analysis by department or project.
- Forward balances — the opening figures.
Common tasks
| You need | Where to go |
|---|---|
| see balances and turnover across all accounts | Trial balance |
| find out whether there will be enough money over the coming weeks | Payment calendar · How to plan payments |
| dig into a single account | Trial balance per account · Nominal Ledger Report |
| see what an account corresponds with | Account correspondence · General ledger with correspondence |
| look through the transactions of a period, whole, with their rows | Transactions Journal |
| look at the financial result | Financial Result |
| build your own reporting form | Report Definitions → Financial Report Builder |
| find which document a posting came from | Transactions: in the transaction card, the menu item "Open original transaction" (F2) |
| trace a deal's chain: order → shipment → invoice → payment | Documents Tree |
| load exchange rates | Central bank exchange rates |
| spread costs over future periods | Deferred Expenses |
| test an idea without touching the books | Simulations |
| bring a simulation into the books as real postings | Create transactions from simulations |
| close the year | Closing periods + accounts reconciliation |
Everything in the module
Accounting: accounts · account classifications · synthetic accounts · transactions · forward balances · closing periods · deferred expenses · simulations
Analysis: objects · object types · graphs (KPIs) · graph preset
Currencies: currency codes · exchange rates · buying/selling currency · FX difference accounts settings
Cash planning: payment calendar · planned payments · expected payment dates
Budgets: budgets · budget keys · budget classes · revised budgets · report definitions
Settings: base currency · account usage · VAT · payment methods · records from subsystems · object type control settings · object mask · account control · accounts reconciliation · non-monetary accounts · balance presentation
Reports: trial balance · trial balance per account · nominal ledger report · general ledger with correspondence · account correspondence · transactions journal · analytical balance · balance by objects · financial result · financial report builder · documents tree
Maintenance: central bank exchange rates · create transactions from simulations · Xlsx Import · Xlsx Export · removing document postings
Where to look next
- Cash book — cash and income/expense items.
- Sales ledger · purchase ledger — where most postings come from.
- Fixed assets — the depreciation that hits expenses every month.