The responsibility of the Journal Approver is to review the ChartFields and ensure that they are correct on the lines that are charged to their units. They should also review attachments and confirm that the journal has appropriate and accurate information and is within policies and procedures.
Each Journal Approver may approve one or more lines on a GL journal. Each line can be evaluated separately. You can choose to approve one or more lines on a Journal and deny another or you may deny all lines. Denying one or more lines will impact the entire Journal and it will have to be remediated before being posted.
In this article, you will learn the steps to deny a General Ledger (GL) Journal in the UGA Financial Management System. GL journals are used to adjust accounting transactions or for internal-to-UGA customer transactions.
Note: Data has been masked or changed to protect employee information.
First log onto https://financials.onesource.uga.edu/
From the UGA Financial Management Employee Self Service page, click the Approval title.
Note: The number in the bottom right corner indicates how many approvals are waiting for your decision.
The Pending Approvals page is displayed with a list of all transactions types awaiting your review and approval.
The organizer on the left arranges these documents by Type (as a default). You can click on any menu item to only see transactions of that type (Ex. Journal Entries).
Example shown here: we will keep Type as our View By option to review all General Ledger Journals.
To review the General Ledger journals waiting for approval, click the Journal Entry link.
Click on the appropriate link to review the accounting information.
Example shown here: click the 180000/1000314971 link.
The Journal Entry page is displayed and provides information to review for approval/denial.
Example shown here: there are two lines pending your approval.
The Summary section includes the Journal ID and header information from the journal.
The Attachments section provides a link to review any documents the initiator has included for justification or information.
Example shown here: there is one attachment you need to review.
Click the View Attachments link.
The View Attachments page is displayed.
There are hyperlinks to any attachments the initiator uploaded for the approver to review. Use the hyperlinks to review the information.
Click the Close button when finished reviewing the documents.
The Lines section contains the accounting information you need to review.
In addition to making sure the Accounting and Department are correct, ensure that all Chartfields, especially, fund, class, and department are correct. If funds are crossed, balancing lines will automatically be added to ensure the journal is balanced by fund.
Note: If the Account Code is 471100 on the revenue (credit) side of the entry, this indicates an Intra-University charge.
Approvers can provide comments regarding a transaction decision in the Approver Comment box.
You can also review the approval workflow chain
Click the Approval Chain link.
The Approval Chain list opens. You can scroll through to see the history of approvals and approver comments for the document.
Close the page when you finish reviewing the Approval Chain.
Click the Close button.
The Pending tab is selected by default and displays the line(s) that you need to approve. You may also review (but not approve) other lines on the journal that have been distributed to other approvers.
You can click the All tab to see lines that are for other approvers.
Review the chartstring and amounts for transaction to be sure they are correct.
Note: Where the journal contains a credit to Revenue account code 471100, the journal is recording an intra-university charge. The Revenue entry for intra-university charges should use Class Code 41900 if in a Departmental sales & Service fund (14xxx) or Class Code 19000 for all other funds excluding Auxiliary and Restricted Funds.
After you have review the accounting information, you are ready to approve or deny.
Click the Select checkbox in front of the row which you want to take action. If you want to take action on all lines at once, click the Select checkbox in the header.
Example shown here: click the header Select checkbox to apply a decision to all lines.
Your action options are displayed in the top right corner of the screen: Approve, Deny, and Hold.
If you choose to deny the journal, it will be sent back to the initiator to correct and resubmit for approval.
Click the Deny button.
Approver comments are required when a request is being denied. This is how the initiator will know why the journal was denied and what they need to do to fix it.
Click the Submit button.