Back to the books

How the books work

Twelve kinds of paper, what each one does to the ledger, and the handful of rules the system will not let you break. This is the same manual the AI works from — so if you and it ever disagree, this page is where to settle it.

01The life of a document

Every paper walks the same four steps, and only ever forwards.

draft
Yours to edit. The only state with an undo — check every figure against the paper here, because after this there is no changing it.
issued
It left the building, and takes its number here if it has none. No more edits. It can now settle things and be settled.
posted
It is in the ledger. The figures are now part of the accounts and show up on every report.
void
Cancelled, with reversal entries written automatically. The original stays visible — a mistake is corrected, never erased. Refused once something has settled the document; see below.
Nothing goes back to draft. A mistake after posting is corrected by voiding and entering it again — which is why the check belongs in the draft, while it is free.

Cancelling something that is already posted

A posted document can be voided — a real invoice does get cancelled. What decides whether it is allowed is one question: has money already moved against it?

Nothing has settled it

Void it. A reversal entry is written automatically and the original stays beside it — net zero, both visible.

JV-00002 Auto-posted — INV-555  Dr 1210 800 · Cr 4110 800
JV-00003 Reversal of JV-00002  Cr 1210 800 · Dr 4110 800

The document keeps its number, lines and attachment, marked void. Three months later the books can still answer what happened to it — a deleted document leaves only a gap in the numbering.

A receipt or a bank line settled it

Refused — and this is the important one. Voiding reverses this document and deliberately leaves the receipt standing, because the money genuinely arrived. Both halves are right; together they leave debtors negative by what was paid, with cash in the bank and nothing to explain it.

1210 debtors  −1,000.00  · 1120 bank  21,000.00  · nothing says why

Raise a credit note instead. It reverses what the invoice put in the ledger and leaves the payment as a balance on the customer — to refund, or to set against their next invoice. Net revenue back to zero, every paper still readable, and the money accounted for rather than orphaned.

There is a way to unwind it instead: void the receipt first. Its entry reverses, the invoice owes again, and a bank line it was matched to reopens — then the invoice voids cleanly. But the money is still on the statement, now unmatched, waiting for you to say what it was. So unwind only when the receipt itself was the mistake — matched to the wrong invoice, say. When the money genuinely arrived and the invoice was wrong, the credit note is the answer: it is what this situation is called in bookkeeping, not a workaround.

Changing a figure on something already posted

The document is sealed — not just the total, but the party, the number, even the date. It will not save. What is not sealed is the entry behind it, and that is the only door in. Walking through it is deliberately a three-step walk, because every step is on the record.

STEP 1Correct the journal Edit the entry to the figure that is actually right. The ledger moves immediately — the journal is what the accounts are made of.
STEP 2The document turns pending verify Automatic, same commit. The two no longer tally, so the document goes red and the entry is marked need_to_verify. It also unlocks.
STEP 3Correct the document to agree Now its lines can be edited. The moment the totals match again, both sides return to posted and done together.
Nothing has settled it

The walk goes through. An invoice mis-keyed at 1,000 that should have been 600 ends up at 600 on both sides, with no reversal entry and no second document — because nothing was ever wrong except the keying.

INV-FREE posted  RM600.00  · outstanding RM600.00

Use this only when the paper was right and the entry was wrong, or the figure was simply typed wrong. If the paper itself is wrong, the customer holds a copy saying 1,000 — that needs a note, not an edit.

Money has already settled it

Step 3 is refused when the corrected figure is lower than what has already been received. Otherwise the invoice drops to 600 while 1,000 sits against it, and the difference has nowhere to live.

INV-PAID  RM600.00  · outstanding  −400.00  · 400 received, unexplained

Put the journal back to what it was — the document returns to posted by itself — then raise a credit note for the difference. It stands open as the customer's 400, to refund or set against their next invoice. Same answer as voiding, for the same reason.

Between step 1 and step 3 the accounts already show the new figure while the document still shows the old one. That gap is the point — it is loud, it is red on the front page, and it is the only thing standing between a quiet edit and a wrong trial balance. Do not leave a document sitting in pending verify overnight.

02Every posting has two sides

Worth holding in your head, because it decides who gets to choose what.

The judgment call

What was bought or sold

The expense, revenue or asset account. This is where capital-versus-expense is decided, and where the house posting preferences earn their keep.

Lorry servicing → 6540  an expense
A computer → 1590  an asset
An oven → 1530  an asset
Not a judgment call — a reading

Which account the money moved through

Bank or till, and only on papers where money actually moved. The paper says which; you are reading it, not deciding it.

Stamped TUNAI → 1110 the till
IBG / DuitNow / transfer → 1120 the bank
A cash bill headed Bil Tunai with no English on it anywhere is still cash. Putting it in the bank is a mistake that stays invisible until the month will not reconcile.

03The twelve papers

Click any one for the steps. Six of them reach the ledger; six never do, by design.

You issue these — money coming in
You issue these — money going out
You receive these

04The rules that catch everyone out

Five of these the database enforces — it will simply refuse you. The last one nothing can enforce, and that is the point of it.

05The bank statement

Not a document — the external check on everything above. It is the one figure in the books the company did not write itself, which is why it comes last.

06Month end

The papers are in and the statement ties out. What is left is reading the result, handing it over, and making sure it stays what was handed over.

Why the AI follows this page

The steps above are the safe operations: they validate their inputs, enforce evidence and the status graph, refuse what should be refused, and each one is recorded and undoable. That makes them exactly the right tools for an agent — so the agent is given the same operations you have, and no others.

It cannot reach into the tables, cannot skip a step you could not skip, and cannot produce a state you could not have produced by hand. When it is unsure it stops and asks rather than guessing, and every move it makes can be undone one at a time.

Recorded on a demo company — the figures are invented.