A journal entry is a manual set of debit and credit lines posted directly to your chart of accounts, for adjustments that don't come through an invoice, bill, or credit note.
Before you start
- At least one account must exist to select on a journal's lines.
- You need the View permission for Journals (own records or all records) to see the list and open journals. You need the Create permission for Journals to create one.
- There's no Edit or Delete control for journals on these screens — see Current limitations.
Team owners and admins always have access.
The journals list
Open Finance > Journals. Columns: Date, Reference, Title/Name, Debit (the journal's total debit), Credit (its total credit). Sorted newest-first by Date. Select a row to open the journal.
There's no search or filter beyond the table's own search box, and no export buttons.
Select the create icon on the toolbar to start a new journal entry.
Create a journal entry
- Select the create icon from the Journals list.
- Optionally set the Date.
- Optionally enter a Reference.
- Enter a Name/title.
- Add a line for each account you're debiting or crediting: choose an Account, and optionally a Memo, a Debit amount, and a Credit amount. The form starts with two blank lines; select Add another line for more, or the remove button to drop one.
- Optionally enter Description and notes.
- Select Create journal entry.
While you fill in the lines, Total debits, Total credits, and a Balance (debits minus credits) update live above the line table, so you can see whether your entry balances before you save.
| Field | Required | What to enter |
|---|---|---|
| Date | No | When the entry was posted. |
| Reference | No | A journal reference. |
| Name/title | Yes | A short label for the entry. |
| Line items | Line's Account is required to keep the line | One row per account, with memo, debit, and credit. |
| Description and notes | No | Free text. |
OCTO Ops does not check that a journal's debits and credits actually balance before saving it. The running Balance figure on the Create page is shown only to help you while you type — an unbalanced journal entry is accepted and saved without any warning.
If a line's account can't be resolved when you save — for example if it was removed after you loaded the page — creating the journal fails unexpectedly, instead of showing a normal error message. If this happens, reload the page and check that every account on your entry still exists.
What happens when you save. OCTO Ops creates the journal with status Active. A line without an Account chosen is silently left out — it isn't rejected, and you won't be told a line was dropped. The journal's Balance is stored exactly as shown on the form when you save (there's no fallback calculation if it's left at 0).
View a journal
Open a journal from the list to see its profile page: reference and status, Name, Description, and Date. A Ledger entries table (Account name, Memo, Debit, Credit) appears when the journal has entries.
There's no Edit control on this page, and printing isn't available for a journal in this version.
Current limitations
- Journals are not checked for balanced debits and credits — an unbalanced entry saves without any warning, even though the Create page's running Balance figure suggests otherwise.
- Choosing an account that can't be resolved when you save causes the request to fail unexpectedly, rather than showing a normal validation message.
- A line without an Account chosen is left out of the journal when you save, without any warning.
- There's no way to edit or delete a journal from this screen.
- No print control is available for a journal.
- A new journal always starts with status Active.
- Because Invoices, Bills & Payments, Journals, and Credit Notes share how they're stored behind the scenes, a permission for one of these submodules can sometimes let you open a record that actually belongs to a different one, if you know or guess its link — see Finance Current limitations.