Entries and ledgers — what each action posts

Every finance action that moves money produces a journal entry. This page states what each one posts. Account codes are those of the standard chart created at onboarding — if your company has renamed a code the behaviour is unchanged, only the label differs.

The one rule

Nothing reaches the ledger except through a journal entry, and every entry balances. There is no path that writes a balance directly. A document that could not post does not post silently — it is refused, and the reason is shown on the document.

An entry has one status that matters: posted. Draft entries affect no report; void entries are reversed rather than deleted, so the original and its reversal both remain visible.

Chart of accounts — the codes referenced below

Code	Account	Type
1000	Cash on Hand	Asset
1010	Bank — Primary	Asset
1100	Accounts Receivable	Asset
1400	Advances to Suppliers	Asset
1600	VAT Input (Receivable)	Asset
1610	Withholding Tax Receivable	Asset
2000	Accounts Payable	Liability
2100	Tax Payable	Liability
2400	Customer Advances	Liability
4000	Freight Revenue	Revenue
5100	Cost of Freight — General	Expense
6800	Foreign Exchange Gain/Loss	Expense

Sales

Issuing an invoice

DR/CR	Code	Account	Amount
DR	1100	Accounts Receivable	Gross
CR	4000	Freight Revenue	Net
CR	2100	Tax Payable	Tax

Posted on issue, not on creation. A draft invoice is not a document yet.

Receiving a payment

DR/CR	Code	Account	Amount
DR	1010	Bank — Primary (or the account selected)	Net received
DR	—	Bank charges expense	Charges deducted
DR	1610	Withholding Tax Receivable	Tax withheld
CR	1100	Accounts Receivable	Gross allocated

Enter the gross amount allocated and record charges and withholding separately. The receivable then clears in full, which is what the customer's statement will show. Recording the net instead leaves a residue on the invoice that nobody can explain.

A credit note

Reverses the invoice entry in proportion to the credit. Used when an invoice has already been paid — an amendment is refused in that case, because the document the customer holds cannot change after money has moved against it.

Purchases

Posting a vendor bill

DR/CR	Code	Account	Amount
DR	—	The expense account on the bill	Net
DR	1600	VAT Input (Receivable)	Tax
CR	2000	Accounts Payable	Gross

Input tax goes to 1600 as an asset, not into the cost — it is recoverable. Where no expense account is chosen the bill posts to 5100.

Where a supplier issues no tax invoice

Port handlers and some cash charges never issue one. Input VAT cannot be reclaimed without a tax invoice carrying the supplier's registration number, so those costs are marked as having no vendor invoice, with a reason, and booked straight to cost with zero recoverable input tax. Recording it deliberately is what keeps it distinguishable from an oversight — and keeps the tax audit file from being rejected for a missing counterparty registration.

One supplier invoice across several charge codes

A handling agent's single invoice may cover the terminal charge, the documentation fee and the inspection — three different charge codes on one booking. They are recorded together: one bill, one document, one reference, and one expense row per charge code sharing the supplier's own invoice number.

The vendor comes from the charge lines and is never asked for again; only one supplier can be on one bill, so lines naming two are refused rather than guessed at. Tax follows the supplier's registration — a registered domestic supplier gives standard VAT, an unregistered or overseas one gives reverse charge — so the operator picks neither the vendor nor the tax code.

The bill is stated in your own currency at the tax point, not at today's rate. A rate that moves between the supply and the entry changes what is recoverable, and the tax point is the date the law names.

What state a cost is in

A booking's cost is not simply paid or unpaid. These six states are derived on every read, never stored — a stored flag drifts from the ledger the moment anything is corrected, and reversing a payment would leave it still reading "paid".

State	What it means
Accrued	Estimated on the booking. No supplier bill recorded.
Paid, not billed	Money has left, but no bill was entered. Not closed — there is no liability for the payment to have settled.
Billed	The supplier's invoice is recorded, unpaid.
Part paid	Billed, paid in instalments.
Settled	Billed and paid in full. The only closed state.
No supplier invoice	A cost the supplier never invoices. No recoverable input tax.

A delivered job whose bill has not arrived still carries an estimated cost, so its margin can still move. Where that job has already been invoiced, revenue has been recognised against a number that is not final.

Corrections

Action	What happens
Amend an unpaid invoice	The original entry is reversed and re-posted at the corrected figures.
Amend a paid invoice	Refused. Issue a credit note instead.
Void an entry	Reversed, never deleted. Both entries stay visible.
Closed period	Posting is blocked. The document waits rather than posting into a filed period.

Tracing a document to its entry

Every entry carries the reference type and id of what caused it, so a document and its posting can always be matched in both directions. Accounting → Posting Log lists what posted and what failed to; a document that never reached the ledger appears there rather than being silently absent.

The full reference

This page covers the postings. The complete 33-page manual adds the screen-by-screen tour, operations that post from forwarding, warehousing and courier, fiscal-period rules, UAE FTA tax compliance, electronic invoicing including the transmission cutover, how each report is built from the ledger, and the month-end checklist.

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