Weekly Review: Extreme Makeover, JE edition

Each week I'd like to cover a feature in GP. Some of them are new, others just underutilized. Ideally, I'd like to do this more than weekly but hey, I have a job.

Extreme Makeover, JE Edition

In version 8.0 Microsoft introduced Journal Entry corrections and copies. This is feature I'd been asking for for some time. I even came close to writing my own version several times. You now have the ability to undo a journal entry, easily, and with a complete audit trail.

In Transactions->Financial->General, select Correct. You now have an option to back out a Journal Entry or Back out a JE and create a correcting entry.

You will also need the JE number (you can look it up) and year of the entry you want to correct.

What happens behind the scenes when you backout an entry is that GP creates a duplicate, opposite JE with a new JE number to offset the one you want to correct. If all you need to do is undo an entry, simply post your correction and you're done.

If you also select a correcting entry, the first entry created is the backout entry. When you post or save the backout entry, a second entry is created. This second entry is your original entry as a new, unposted JE that you can make changes to.

Both the backout and the correction are normal JE's that can be save to a batch, changed, posted, made reversing, etc.

Some obvious uses:

• That batch of month end accruals was accidentally posted in next month. Simply pull up the JE, do a correction to back it out of next month, and change the date on the correcting entry to the correct month. Post it all an you are in business.
• The 150 line JE keyed incorrectly by an intern. Hopefully this was reviewed before posting, but if not, use this tool to backout the incorrect entry and make the intern fix the correcting entry (or re-key it, depending on how mad you are ;).

A related feature is to Copy a JE. Same process, just click copy instead of correct. This is great when you need to create a JE just like the one you did last month!
By default, Correction only works for transactions that originated in the General Ledger. However, the administrator can change this behavior.
Tools>Setup>Financial>General Ledger now has new check boxes to control this functionality. Check "Voiding/Correcting of Subsidiary Transactions" and "Back Out of Inter-company Transactions" to allow for corrections of transactions originating in a sub-ledger.
This a great feature, a critical feature, that the competition has had for a while. Now we've got it and I love it. But you have to be on v8.0 or better. This was one of the compelling features that pushed us to upgrade to 8.0. Detailed specifics can be found in GP Help. Happy Fixing!