Bookkeeping

Reviewing a ledger

Work through a ledger entry by entry in manual review, correct what Spyral read, and finalise the ledger.

Manual review is where you check what Spyral posted and correct it. It is the only review path in Spyral. There is no separate approve step and no way to sign off a ledger in bulk without looking at its entries.

Open the ledger and choose Manual review.

The layout

The dialog has three parts.

Left: the entry list. Every entry in the ledger, each with an icon showing whether it has been reviewed.
Centre: Entry details and Journal lines. The header fields of the entry, then the lines themselves.
Right: the source document. The document the entry was read from, so you can compare without leaving the dialog. If there is no document behind the entry, this pane says so.

At the top you see how many entries are reviewed out of the total, the fiscal year, and which entry you are on. Under the entry there is a How this entry was read panel explaining what Spyral understood from the document. Read it when an entry looks odd; it usually explains itself.

What you can change

In Entry details: the date, the reference, the vendor or client, and the description.

In Journal lines: for each line, the account code, the account name, the line description, the debit and the credit. Under the table you get the total debit, the total credit, the balance and a check mark.

Entry statuses

Reviewed, a person has checked this entry.
Needs review, Spyral flagged it for attention. Counterparty entries and anything it was unsure about arrive this way.
Not reviewed, nobody has looked at it yet.

You may also see a Check the source document flag, warning that the entry was read with low certainty and that you should confirm the accounts and the amounts before signing it off.

Working through the ledger

Use Previous and Next to move between entries, and Mark reviewed and next to sign one off and move on.

Your edits are saved when you move between entries, and when you close the dialog. You do not need to look for a save button. If a save fails, the dialog stays open with your changes still in it rather than losing them.

If you were asked to review specific entries, you walk only those. When you finish the last one, the dialog closes and tells you that you have reviewed every entry assigned to you.

If you open a review from a notification link and that entry has changed since the link was sent, Spyral tells you so and opens the first unreviewed entry instead.

An entry must balance before you can review it

Careful

You cannot mark an unbalanced entry as reviewed. If the debits and the credits on an entry do not match, Spyral refuses and tells you that they must balance first.

Correct the lines so the totals agree, then mark it reviewed. The tolerance is half a cent, so rounding differences of a cent or more will block you.

Editing a reviewed entry un-reviews it

Careful

If you change the journal lines of an entry that was already reviewed, it quietly stops being reviewed.

There is no confirmation and no message. The reasoning is sound: the sign-off covered the lines as they were, and those lines no longer exist. If you edit and walk away without looking, you will come back to a ledger that is no longer complete.

After editing a reviewed entry, mark it reviewed again.

Never quote an entry by its number

Careful

Entry numbers are not permanent. They describe the order entries were posted in, not the order of the dates, and they move.

When a document is re-processed, its entries are removed and posted again at the end of the ledger with new numbers. The numbers it gave up can then be handed to a different entry later on.

So "please check entry 14" is meaningless a week later, and can point at something entirely different by then. When you need to refer to an entry in an email or a note to a colleague, use the date, the reference and the counterparty, or send a review request instead, which links straight to the right entry. See Requesting and assigning reviews.

Finishing the ledger

You do not finalise a ledger yourself. When the last entry is marked reviewed, Spyral moves the ledger to Reviewed, records who completed it and when, clears any outstanding review request, and closes the dialog telling you all entries are reviewed.

The reverse also holds. If you later un-review a single entry, the ledger drops back to Ready for review. So does a ledger that receives new entries from a fresh upload, which is covered in Ledgers and fiscal years.

Your corrections are not thrown away

Every correction you make while reviewing teaches Spyral something, and corrections made during review take effect immediately. This is what stops you fixing the same vendor onto the same account every month. See How Spyral learns from your corrections.

Before you file

A ledger has to be at least Ready for review and has to balance before it can be exported for filing. Reviewing it properly first is what keeps the filing clean. See Templates and exports and Exporting for eCDF.

Who can review

Consultants and administrators can review entries and request reviews. A viewer can read a ledger but cannot review or correct it.

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