How Verasol keeps your books
Double entry, documents that book themselves, a ledger that is never edited, locked periods and an audit trail. The rules behind every number in Verasol.
Verasol keeps your books by double entry, like any accounting system, with a few firm rules on top. Your documents book their own journal entries when they are issued, approved or posted. What is in the ledger is never edited or deleted: a mistake is corrected by a reversing entry and a new one, so the history always shows what happened. Dates that are closed or declared to the FTA are locked. And every night Verasol checks that it all still adds up. This article explains these rules; the other articles in this section show the screens.
Double entry#
Every journal entry has at least two lines, and its debits equal its credits, in AED and in the currency of the document. Verasol refuses an entry that does not balance, so your trial balance always balances.
Every entry posts to accounts of your chart of accounts. Each kind of posting has its account: sales to the revenue account of the item, the amount the customer owes to Accounts Receivable, the VAT to VAT Output, and so on. You choose these on the Default accounts tab of the chart of accounts, and an item can have its own sales and purchase accounts.
Documents book themselves#
You do not write journal entries for your daily work. Each document books its own entry at the moment it becomes final:
| Document | Booked when |
|---|---|
| Sales invoice, credit note | It is issued |
| Supplier bill, debit note | It is approved |
| Payment received or made | It is posted |
| Goods receipt, delivery note | The goods are received or delivered |
| Payroll | The payroll run is processed, and again when it is paid |
| Depreciation | The month's depreciation is posted |
| VAT return | It is filed |
Quotes, purchase orders and sales orders book nothing: they are commitments, not transactions. For everything that has no document, such as an accrual or a reclassification, you post a manual journal entry.
Each entry is linked to its document. In Journal Entries, an entry made by a document names the document, and View opens it.
1 View opens the invoice the entry belongs to. 2 Journal Entry Lines: AED 8,977.50 to Accounts Receivable, AED 8,550.00 to revenue and AED 427.50 to VAT Output.
A draft is not in the books#
A document or a manual entry starts as a draft. A draft can be deleted (a draft document can also be changed; a draft journal entry is deleted and made again), and it changes nothing in your books, your reports or your VAT return. Only when it is issued, approved or posted does Verasol check it and book it. Vera works the same way: what she prepares is a draft until a person approves it, unless your company has switched on YOLO mode.
Posted entries never change#
Once an entry is posted, it stays exactly as it is. Nobody can edit or delete it in Verasol, and neither can Vera.
A mistake is corrected the accounting way, with a reversal (a storno) and, where needed, a new entry:
- A document is corrected on the document itself: an invoice with a credit note, a bill with a debit note, and many documents, such as bills, payments and transfers, by cancelling, voiding or reversing them. Verasol then posts the reversal of the document's entries for you, and when the document is corrected rather than cancelled, it books the corrected version as a new entry.
- A manual entry is reversed in Journal Entries with Void Entry, and the right entry is posted as a new one.
The reversal is the mirror of the original: the same accounts and amounts with debits and credits swapped. Both stay in the ledger, linked to each other. For example, transfer FT-2026-0013 in the documentation company was entered on the wrong account and then reversed:
1 The original entry, made by the transfer. 2 Its reversal. 3 The original stays Posted and shows that it was Reversed.
| Account | JE-2026-6206-01336 (the transfer) | JE-2026-6206-01337 (its reversal) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debit | Credit | Debit | Credit | |
| Call Deposit Account (Emirates NBD) | 10,000.00 | 10,000.00 | ||
| Current Account (Emirates NBD) | 10,026.25 | 10,026.25 | ||
| 6800 Bank Charges | 25.00 | 25.00 | ||
| 1201 VAT Input (Recoverable) | 1.25 | 1.25 |
Together the two entries leave nothing in the books, and anyone can see what was booked, when and why.
The date of a reversal#
A reversal is dated on the original's date while that date is still open, so the original and its correction fall in the same period. If the date is locked (see below), the reversal is dated today instead, and the locked period keeps its figures. All the reversals of one cancelled document share one date.
Locked dates#
Some dates can no longer be booked on, because their figures have been closed or declared:
| What locks it | What is locked |
|---|---|
| A closed month | Everything dated on or before its last day |
| A filed VAT return | Invoices and bills dated in its VAT period, and any posting to the VAT accounts in it |
| A filed corporate tax return | Income and expense postings in its tax year |
| A finished bank reconciliation | Postings on that bank account in the reconciled period |
| The start of your books | Everything before your opening date |
Verasol also refuses entries dated after the end of the current month (a future entry waits as a draft), and anything on a bank or cash account dated after today. When Verasol refuses something, its message says which rule applies and what to do instead.
Some accounts only take their own documents#
Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory, the VAT accounts, the payroll liabilities, the fixed-asset accounts and a few others are each kept equal to the list of items behind them: the open invoices, the open bills, the stock valuation, the asset register. Only their own documents post to them; a manual journal entry is refused. This is what makes your aged receivables always agree with Accounts Receivable. See Chart of accounts.
The audit trail#
- Every posted entry has its journal number, in a series per financial year, and shows who posted it and when. A draft only gets its journal number when it is posted, so deleted drafts leave no gaps.
- History on a journal entry, an invoice, a bill or a payment shows who created it, changed it, issued or posted it, and reversed it.
- Changes to settings, accounts and other records are kept in the audit log.
Books health checks it every night#
Every night Verasol checks that the books still agree with themselves and with your documents: that the trial balance balances, that each control account equals the documents behind it, that filed returns and closed months have not changed, and many more. See Books health.