Journal Voucher (JV) Document Type

The Journal Voucher (JV) Document Type is a document that is not based on a single business function. The primary use of the Journal Voucher is to record accounting activities that cannot be accomplished with other documents or do not fit the business function of any other document. The only updates made by this document are to reference queries, accounting control tables, budgets, and journals.

The Journal Voucher is structured with a single document Header, as all documents are. The Header is then followed by a document section called the Line Group. Below the Line Group is the Accounting Line section. There can be one or more Line Groups within a single Journal Voucher document. An Accounting Line has to be defined within a single Line Group. However the numbering of Accounting Lines is one sequence of numbers for the entire document and not within each Line Group.

The actual number of records permitted for any document section of the JV Document Type is controlled by records with a Property of MAX_LINE_LIMIT on the Document Component Requirements (DCREQ) table in the Administration Application.

Referencing

The Journal Voucher line group provides fields for document referencing information that will default to all accounting lines in the line group for data entry assistance. A user may also choose to change the references at the line level to other lines or documents. When the user changes the defaults entered at the line group, all references on the accounting lines defined for it are changed. When the reference fields on the line group are blank, there is no defaulting to the accounting lines.

Like the accounting lines of other document types, the Journal Voucher lines follow the same reference requirement rules that may exist on the Event Type and Document Control tables. In addition to those tables that have reference requirement rules, the Document Allowable References table also controls what document codes a document code of the Journal Voucher can reference. The Journal Voucher is limited in the Reference Type that it can perform. Only a Memo reference can be performed to another document. Partial and Final references are not allowed on the Journal Voucher. However, the Memo reference will update all reference queries and will be recorded in journals.

Referencing by Journal Vouchers is highly recommended when the document is being used to adjust previous accounting from another document. The recommended approach is to modify the original document to make the correction there, but that is not always possible and not always a desired procedural solution. However, it should be noted that if the Journal Voucher is used to adjust the amount or chart of account information from a previous document, any subsequent changes or references to that original document will still use the amount and chart of accounts prior to the correction.

Balancing

Balancing is a very important feature for the Journal Voucher. For other document types balancing is performed by the application. Line groups have three different types of balance edits:

One edit ensures that the total debit lines equals the total credit lines defined to a line group.

A second balancing edit is that all debit lines for a particular fund (including a sub fund if available) equal the credit lines for that same fund (and sub fund) within a given accounting period and fiscal year. This edit is often referred to as intra-fund balancing. The Include BFY in JV Balancing field on Document Control (DCTRL) can extend this intra-fund balancing to include budget fiscal year in addition to accounting period and fiscal year.

There is a third optional and configurable edit for balancing cash updates. The Cash Balance Level field on Document Control (DCTRL) has two settings that ensure balancing on accounting lines that use a cash posting code. The first is a balance across the document and the second is a balance within Fund and Sub Fund.

Defaulting Balance Sheets

Unlike other documents, Journal Vouchers do not default balance sheet accounts from settings on the Posting Code table. The user must enter these accounts on the document, where as other accounting documents will infer such accounts for users. For example, when an internal exchange is done between a seller and buyer where cash is to be used as the offset, the Internal Exchange (IET) document will infer the cash account from the bank of both parties. The same accounting event entered on a Journal Voucher would require the user to enter a cash account for both parties. The reason for this behavior is two-fold - one functional and one technical:

The Journal Voucher is an advanced accounting document where accounts that would normally default on other documents are not to be used in lieu of manual specification of another account.
The Journal Voucher does not use the generic or any other type of event type processor to generate posting lines, but rather creates posting lines with document-specific logic. This is possible since an accounting line on a Journal Voucher is entered with much of the same detail as system-generated posting lines on other documents. It is the use of these event type processors that allows for other documents to default accounts.

Automatic Reversals

The Journal Voucher is capable of performing one action that no other document type can perform. This action creates a second Journal Voucher in the future exactly like the first one except that the debit and credit amounts on the accounting lines are reversed. This action can only be performed once in the future, making it different than the main trigger type - Recurring. The same table that controls all automatically triggered documents, the Future Document Triggering (FDT) table, handles this reversing action.

Information to establish reversals is contained in the header section of the Journal Voucher. Two fields make up the information. One is the Reversal Date, which is when the automatic creation of the reversing Journal Voucher is to be performed. It must be a date in the future. The second field, Create Reversal Document on Hold, is an indication of whether or not the reversing Journal Voucher will be created in the Hold document status or with a status of Ready.

When the reversal is created, line groups and accounting lines will contain memo references to the original Journal Voucher. If there were references already on the first document, the second document replaces them. Because of this reference, when a user retrieves the history of either Journal Voucher, they will see that there is a second Journal Voucher that relates to the first. Another way to locate the reversing Journal Voucher is to search for the original Journal Voucher on the Future Document Triggering (FDT) table as it will list that reversing document in the Generated Document ID (Gen. Doc. ID) column. This second method is not as permanent as using the document reference query because triggers are removed based on the Expire Date found on the FDT table.

A Journal Voucher may not contain both recurring and reversing information. You can only have one of either type.

Manual Reversals

The Journal Voucher is capable of performing a copy forward action that no other document type can perform. This action creates a second Journal Voucher exactly like the first one with all the same fields in the copy document action. However, there are a few exceptions:

If the Reversal Date is populated it will be cleared out on the 2nd
If the Create Reversal Document on Hold is checked it will be unchecked on the 2nd
The line group of the 2nd will contain the referenced document code, department, and ID if the 1st
Accounting lines will have the debit amount and credit amount fields swapped on the 2nd from what was on the 1st
Accounting lines on the 2nd will memo reference the corresponding accounting line of the 1st

The resulting document from this copy forward is the same as the reversal generated by the Future Document Triggering (FDT) chain job. Uses of the copy forward can be:

Reversing a journal voucher entered without a reversal date by mistake
Reversing a journal voucher on a different date than originally anticipated (would need to delete the FDT entry in such a case)
Reversing a journal voucher where the date of the reversal was not known in advance
Reversing the impacts of a journal voucher entered in error

The application is delivered with data to reverse the journal vouchers manually entered. Those from batch processed do not have an anticipated reason for reversing. If there becomes a need to reverse a batch journal voucher, then a record can be added to the Document Copy Forward Control page. Unlike a copy document action where the 2nd document has to be the same document code as the first, this copy forward action allows a user to copy one journal voucher document code into another, thus a special document code can be setup for manual reversals if necessary.

Document Control Settings and Security

The Override of BFY Staging Allowed flag will not apply if an Event Type is not supplied. In this case the Journal Voucher will skip BFY Staging editing. If entered, posting lines must meet BFY Staging rules. If not, a reject error will occur unless the Override of BFY Staging Allowed flag is checked, in which case the error will be an overrideable one.

The Event Type Required flag is only read by the JV document type. If checked, the document code will always require an event type. Such a requirement will ensure users enter only the posting codes defined to an Event Type and do not used posting codes they shouldn’t.

The many other controls in the Allowable Elements section of Document Control will often be checked for journal voucher document codes because the document is a tool for recording events ‘after the fact’ or for accounting corrections. For this reason, security for journal vouchers is often tightly controlled.