Reports and closing the year

The big picture#

Every time you issue an invoice, post a bill, record a payment or move cash, Hubtoll writes a journal entry in the background. A journal entry is a small record that says "this much came out of one account and went into another". All reports are built from those entries. Nothing is typed twice, so the reports cannot drift away from the documents.

The reports answer different questions:

Where everything lives#

Open Sales and Finance in the left menu.

Most report pages have a Filters button and a refresh icon at the top. Dates are set inside Filters, not in a separate box. That is where you choose the Report date or As of date.

Journal Entries#

Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Journal Entries. This is the full list of what has been posted.

There are three tabs:

• Journal entries shows the posted entries.
• All approvals shows manual journals and where each one is in approval.
• Awaiting me shows manual journals that are waiting for you to decide.

Each row shows the Number, Posting date, Customer / vendor, Narration (with a link back to the document that caused it), the Journal total and the Status. Click a row to open the entry and see its debit and credit lines.

Journal total is not the invoice total#

This surprises people. The Journal total adds up every debit in the entry, not what the customer owes.

When you open an entry, the page says this in words, so nobody thinks the books are wrong.

Find the document behind an entry#

The Narration column links to the document that created the entry, for example an invoice or a bill. Open the document, and its page shows a Posted journal link back to the entry. You can walk from a number to its cause and back in two clicks.

Post a manual journal#

A manual journal is an entry you write by hand, for things that do not come from a document, like a correction or an accrual. You need the Accountant role.

1. Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Journal Entries and click Manual journal.
2. Pick the Posting date and type a Narration that tells the next person why.
3. On each line choose the Account, then type a Debit or a Credit, not both. Add a Memo if you like. Budget is optional and links the line to an approved departmental budget.
4. Click Add line until the entry is complete. You need at least two lines.
5. Watch the totals under the table: Debits and Credits. When they match, click Post journal.

The Post journal button stays off until the debits equal the credits and are not zero. If you somehow send an unbalanced entry, Hubtoll refuses with "Journal entry is not balanced" and shows both totals.

Reverse an entry#

Click the Reverse icon on a posted row and confirm Reverse this journal entry? with Reverse entry. You need the Accountant role.

Chart of Accounts#

Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Chart of Accounts. This is the list of every account, grouped by type: assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses.

• Add account opens a short form: Code, Name, Account type, Parent account (optional) and Description.
• System accounts are created for you, like Accounts Receivable and Retained Earnings. Hubtoll depends on them to post, so they are protected. You can change only the display name and the description. You cannot delete one.
• Deactivate an account you no longer want. Hubtoll asks "Deactivate account?" The account needs a zero balance. It stops taking new postings, but its history stays.

Setting up a whole chart at once. Click Download template. It is an Excel file with an Accounts sheet to fill in and a sheet that lists every code you already have. Fill it in, then click Upload filled template. Hubtoll checks the file before it creates anything and shows the result. An account that is already there is skipped, not treated as an error. A parent can be listed below its child in the same file.

Trial Balance#

Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Trial Balance. It lists every account with its Code, Account, Type, Debit and Credit, and Totals at the bottom.

How to read it. Look for the badge next to the dates. It says BALANCED when total debits equal total credits. That is the whole point of the page: every account's net activity: debits must always equal credits.

What normal looks like. The badge reads BALANCED, and the two totals are exactly equal. Because Hubtoll refuses unbalanced entries, you should never see OUT OF BALANCE. If you do, stop and contact support, because something has gone wrong that you did not cause.

By default the report covers all activity to date. Open Filters and use Report date (between, on, on or after, on or before) to look at one month or one year. You can also filter by Code, Account name, Type, Active and System account.

Profit & Loss#

Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Profit & Loss. It shows how you did over a period, in this order:

1. Income, with Total income.
2. Cost of sales, with Total cost of sales.
3. Gross profit (income minus cost of sales).
4. Operating expenses, with Total operating expenses.
5. Net profit (gross profit minus expenses). This is your bottom line.

Each line shows an account code, a name and an amount, so you can see where the money came from and went.

What normal looks like. A shop that stocks goods has income, a cost of sales smaller than income, and a positive gross profit. A service business may have no cost of sales at all, and the page says "No cost of sales in this range". A negative net profit means a loss for the period.

Like the trial balance, it covers all activity to date until you set a Report date in Filters. For a clean monthly or yearly result, set a date range.

Balance Sheet#

Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Balance Sheet. It is a photograph of the business on one day, set by As of in Filters (today by default).

• Assets is what you own: cash, money customers owe you, stock.
• Liabilities is what you owe: suppliers, tax, customer prepayments.
• Equity is what is left for the owners.

The page says it plainly: assets must equal liabilities plus equity. The BALANCED badge confirms it.

The Current year earnings row#

Inside Equity you will see a row called Current year earnings. It holds the profit or loss you have made that has not yet been rolled into Retained Earnings. It is not a real account and nothing is posted to it. It is there so the sheet always balances.

Locking a month: Fiscal Periods#

Your year is cut into monthly periods, created for you. Open Sales and Finance›Finance Settings›Fiscal Periods. Each period is in one of three states:

Click the Close (one step) icon to move a period one step: Open to Soft closed, then Soft closed to Locked. Hubtoll asks "Close period?" first. Click Reopen to take it back to Open. Reopening asks "Reopen period?" and warns that it allows backdated postings into a period you may already have reported on.

You need the Accountant role.

If someone posts into a locked month, Hubtoll says: "The fiscal period … is locked. Post a correction into an open period instead." For a soft-closed month it says: "The fiscal period is soft-closed; only an accountant can post into it." The fix for a locked month is a correcting entry dated in a month that is still open.

Closing the year#

Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Fiscal Years. Each year shows its Start, End, Status and a Closing journal number once closed.

What closing does. At the end of a year, the income and expense accounts hold that year's results. Closing posts one closing journal that zeroes them out and moves the net profit (or loss) into Retained Earnings. Your next year then starts with clean income and expense accounts.

1. Make sure every posting for the year is in. Finish and reconcile your bank accounts, see Banking.
2. Open Sales and Finance›Finance Settings›Fiscal Periods and soft close every period of the year.
3. Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Fiscal Years and click the Close year icon on that year.
4. Read the message ("Close fiscal year?") and click Close year.
5. Go back to Fiscal Periods and lock the periods if you want them sealed for good.

Rules and messages you may meet:

• "Soft-close every period of the year before running the year-end close". All periods must be soft closed first, so nothing can land after the close.
• "The year's final period must be soft-closed (not locked) so the closing journal can post. Lock it after the year-end close". Lock the last period after closing, not before.
• "This fiscal year is already closed".

A closed year is sealed. Nobody can post into it. Hubtoll says: "The fiscal year for 2026-12-31 is closed. Reopen it before posting into it". This protects the numbers you have already reported.

Reopening. Click the Reopen year icon and confirm Reopen fiscal year?. Hubtoll reverses the closing journal and lets you post into the year again. Close it again when you are done. If a period is locked inside a closed year, reopen the year first: "The fiscal year is closed; reopen the fiscal year first". Both closing and reopening are recorded for audit.

Who owes you, and who you owe#

AR Aging (Sales and Finance›Sales & Receivables›AR Aging) lists customers. AP Aging (Sales and Finance›Payables & Bills›AP Aging) lists vendors. They are mirrors of each other.

Each row has the party's name and five buckets, then a Total:

Buckets are counted from each document's due date. If a document has no due date, its own date is used.

As of. Set an As of date and the page rebuilds what was owed on that day. It counts only payments and credits dated on or before that day, so you can look back at last month-end and get the numbers as they truly were.

What normal looks like. Most money sits in Current and 1–30. Money drifting into 61–90 and 90+ is the warning sign: chase the customer, or pay the vendor. When nothing is owed you see "Nothing outstanding. Every issued invoice is settled" on AR, and "Nothing outstanding. Every posted bill is settled" on AP.

Amounts are shown in your base currency. See Currencies.

Customer and vendor statements#

Customer Statements and Vendor Statements list every customer or vendor with five figures for a period:

How to read a row. Opening plus what was charged (or billed), minus what was paid or credited, gives the Closing balance.

Click a customer or vendor to open their running ledger: an opening balance, then every invoice, payment, credit and refund (or bill, payment and credit for a vendor) in date order, each with a running Balance, ending at the Closing balance. This is the page to send to a customer who asks "what do I owe?".

Choosing the period. Open Filters and set Statement period. Until you do, a statement covers all activity to date, and the page says what it is showing. The period you set follows you into the running ledger when you open a customer.

The list and the ledger use the same calculation, so a row's Closing balance always equals the closing balance on the page it opens.

FX Revaluation#

If you hold foreign money, its value in your base currency moves as the exchange rate moves. At the end of a period you restate it. Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›FX Revaluation. You need the Accountant role.

1. Under Run a Revaluation, choose the Currency. It must be a foreign currency.
2. Type the Period end rate.
3. Pick the Revaluation date.
4. Choose the Accounts to revalue: receivable, payable and bank accounts that hold that currency.
5. Click Run revaluation.

The gain or loss is posted to an unrealized gain or loss account. It reverses itself the next day. That is deliberate: the figure is a snapshot for your reports, and it must not carry into the next period or be counted again when the real payment arrives.

Refusals you may meet:

• "Only a FOREIGN currency can be revalued".
• "A positive period-end rate is required".
• "At least one account to revalue is required".
• "Nothing to revalue: the selected accounts have no USD balance change".
• "Cannot revalue as of …: the auto-reversal date … falls in a locked or closed period. Revalue on a date whose next day is open". Pick a date whose following day is still open.

Budgets and variance#

Open Sales and Finance›General Ledger›Budgets. A budget is your plan: the amount you expect to spend or earn on each account. Hubtoll then compares it with what was really posted.

There are two kinds, and they behave differently.

Departmental budgets from HR. When a department's budget is approved in the HR Budget module, it flows here. Hubtoll keeps one managed budget per fiscal year, with one line per ledger account. You cannot edit it here. Change the departmental budget in HR, or the link between its categories and ledger accounts, and this one updates itself. A chip says From departmental budgets. The Recompute now button, for editors, forces a refresh. Lines that have no usable ledger account appear under Needs coding, and are not in the budget until they are fixed. See Budget management.

Budgets you write yourself. Click New budget. Give it a Budget name, then add a line for each Ledger account with a Budgeted amount, and optional Notes. It starts as a draft. Use the row icons to Activate a draft, Archive an active one, Edit, or Delete a draft. An archived budget cannot be edited or reopened, and only a draft can be deleted.

Reading the variance#

Click the Open variance icon on a budget. You see Budgeted vs actual from the ledger, as of the date you choose, with an As of date. Columns: Account, Period, Budgeted, Actual, Variance, Variance %.

Variance is Budgeted minus Actual. A positive figure means you are under budget. A negative figure means you have spent more than planned.

VAT Return and WHT Ledger#

These two reports are about tax, so they live in Sales and Finance›Sales & Receivables.

• VAT Return compares Output VAT (on sales) with Input VAT (recoverable) for a Return period you choose, then click Run. It shows either Net VAT payable or VAT credit carried forward, and the filing due date.
• WHT Ledger lists the withholding tax movements for a Period: tax a customer held back from you (a credit towards your own tax) and tax you held back from a vendor. It shows Receivable and Payable totals.

How tax rates are set up, and how these two pages are used in practice, is in Tax: VAT, withholding and returns.

Who can do what#

You also need an active Sales and Finance seat. See the permission reference and Roles.

Common questions#