Read a Finance report and trace its source
Use the general ledger and report period to answer a specific financial reporting question.
Read a Finance report and trace its source
Some questions are best answered in the module that owns the records. Finance’s native reports can help you inspect recorded entries without building a separate BI dashboard.
Before you start: You need access to the relevant Finance records. This guide explains report navigation, not how to make accounting or payment decisions.
Trace a ledger line
1. Open Finance → Accounting → General ledger. Read the Date, Journal, Account, Description, Debit, Credit and Running balance columns.
2. Choose a line you need to understand. Keep its journal and account identity together; a running balance is not necessarily the amount of that individual line.
3. Open Accounting → Journals → Journals and find the exact journal reference. Compare the account, side, amount, description and Entry Date with the ledger.
Read a profit-and-loss period
4. Open Finance → Administration → Reports. Choose Profit & loss as the Financial report and select the Report tab.
5. Check the currently applied date range before changing it. To enter dates, open Date range, then the calendar header’s pencil icon. Read the input format; the demonstrated text fields use month/day/year.
6. Enter your intended start and end dates and select OK. Check the applied range and wait for the result to settle.
7. Compare the relevant revenue and expense rows with their source journals. Keep Entry Date separate from the date a journal was posted. Restore the original range afterward if that is the view you need.
Interpret the answer
Profit and loss summarises revenue and expenses for its selected period. Net income is not the same as bank balance or cash received.
A zero result needs the same scope and source check as any other result. Do not repost a journal or alter its date just to make a report nonempty.
Your result is a report answer tied to an applied period and identifiable source entries.
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