Introduction

A client reported that when reversing a large journal via the “Reverse” option in the “General Ledger Entries” page only part of their original General Journal was reversed?

This stumped me and forced me to dig deeper into how the journal was posted. On investigation it seems the journal lines on the journal had been grouped, and each group has been given a different “Transaction No.” in the G/L Entry table. Then, when the reversal option had been selected, only those lines with the same “Transaction No” had reversed.

Its the first time I’ve come across this behaviour in one distinct journal, so in this post I’ll demonstrate how this happened and the correct way this should have been reversed. (i.e. I’d expect this for different document numbers but not the same document number)

The Journal

The clients journal contained many lines however I can recreate the scenario with a much simpler journal.

Below is a journal with five lines. All the lines have the same Posting Date and Document number and the journal balances to nil. This is essentially one journal which we want to post as one unit.

I’ll now post the journal and go and view this in the General Ledger Entries page. I filter on the document number and I can see the full journal. This is great and just what I expect 🙂

The Reversal

I now realise I’ve made a mistake and want to reverse the whole journal. Therefore, while still in the General Ledger Entries page, I select the top line and choose “Process > Reverse Transaction” from the menu however it only gives me the option to reverse a portion of the journal? (the first three lines of the original journal)

So what has happened here? Why is the system not offering to Reverse all the entries on this Document Number?

The Transaction No. column

As shown on the screen shot above it seems the “Reverse Transaction” option pulls back the G/L Entries based on a “Transaction No.”?

I’ve never seen this column before, and when I try and add this via personalisation to the “General Ledger Entries” page, its not an available column?

I’ll therefore dig deeper and look at this document number directly in the the G/L Entry table, and there I can see the journal has been grouped and each group has been given a separate “Transaction No.”

So now the question is why has a journal with the same Posting Date and Document Number been broken up and given two separate “Transaction No.”?

The answer lies in how I posted the journal. If I look back at my original journal I’d inadvertently balanced the journal in two sections.

It seems even though the journal lines have the same posting date, and more importantly the same document number, the system gave these a different “Transaction No” based on how its balanced part way through.

Finally, it seems the “Reverse Transaction” function pulls back the entries based on this “Transaction No.” which causes a complication if I wanted to reverse the whole Document Number.

Quickly Reverse all Entries

So how do I reverse all the lines?

In my example its quick and easy as the journal is small. I could stay in the “General Ledger Entries” page and select one of the first three lines, and click “Reverse Transaction” and then select the fourth line and use the same “Reverse Transaction” option. However what happens if the journal contained many lines that had been grouped into lots of different “Transaction No.”?

In this scenario you can reverse via the G/L Registers page.

As the G/L Register contains all the G/L entries in my journal I just click click “Reverse > Reverse Register” as per below

This gives me all the G/L Entries in my journal that I can then reverse.

It was great investigating and finding out more about how Business Central works in the background. In some ways you could argue this behaviour is advantageous, as you have the opportunity to only reverse part of one huge journal.

My biggest takeaway from this is when reversing an entry via the “Reverse Transaction” in the “General Ledger Entries” page ensure all the expected lines are being reversed.

Also, if you do want to reverse all the journal lines consider using the “Reverse Register” function on the “G/L Register” page rather than “Reverse Transaction”.

Thanks for reading!