Approving a General Ledger Journal

Body

Overview

Journal Approvers are responsible for the first level of approvals in workflow when a journal is initiated. 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 transaction has appropriate and accurate information and is within policies and procedures.

Each Journal Approver may approve one or more lines on a General Ledger (GL) journal. Each line can be evaluated separately. You can choose to approve one or more lines and deny another. Denying one line will impact the entire Journal and it will have to be remediated before being posted.

In your role as a Journal Approver, also consider:

Use of fund and class codes should be consistent. Pay special attention to transactions which cross funds. Refer to the COA Code Structure document for more information on the structure and how errors can be avoided.
Journals for Intra-University charges may cross funds. An example of this is a journal where the Entomology department uses general funds from Fund 10500 to pay the Georgia Center for an activity that creates Departmental Sales revenue to the Georgia Center in fund 14000.

After it has obtained approval from all Journal Approvers, it will pass to appropriate central offices like Sponsored Projects, if appropriate, and then on to Central Accounting for final approval.

Journal Approvers who have questions about what the review process should include before approving a GL journal entry should refer to the following document created by the Accounting Office: Financial Review and Analysis resource page.

In this article, you will learn how to approve 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.

1. Step 1

First, log into the UGA Financial Management system.

You can find the Approvals tile on the UGA Financials Employee Self Service page.

Click the Approval tile.

Note: The number in the bottom right corner indicates the number of approval waiting for your decision.

2. Step 2

The Pending Approval page is displayed with a list of all transactions types awaiting your review and approval.

The View By menu sorts available documents by Type . You can click on any menu item to only see transactions of that type (ex: Journal Entries).

3. Step 3

To sort the list in by different criteria, click the View By list.

4. Step 4

A list of display options is shown.

You can view by the Date Routed, Priority, or the Requester.

Click the Type option.

5. Step 5

To review the General Ledger journals waiting for approval, click the Journal Entry tab.

6. Step 6

Locate and select the Journal Entry to review the accounting information.

Click on the appropriate Journal Entry.

7. Step 7

The Journal Entry page is displayed along with information to review for approval.

Example shown here: two lines pending your approval.

8. Step 8

The summary section is the header information from the journal. It includes the Journal ID, Journal Description, and Ledger Group.

9. Step 9

The Attachment section provides a link to review any documents the initiator has included for justification or information.

Click the View Attachments link.

10. Step 10

The View Attachment page is displayed.

Use the attached file links to review the information in deciding to approve or deny the journal.

11. Step 11

When finished reviewing, click the Close button.

12. Step 12

The Lines section contains accounting information to review.

Make sure the Account, Department, and Chartfields for the Fund and Class are correct. If Funds are crossed, additional lines will be automatically added to the journal to balance the fund amounts.

Note: If the Account Code is 471100 on the revenue (credit) side of the entry, this indicates an Intra-University charge.

13. Step 13

Approvers can enter comments here. Previously entered comments will be displayed in the Approval Chain.

14. Step 14

Approval Chain displays the approval workflow chain.

Click the Approval Chain link.

15. Step 15

You can scroll through to see the history of approvals for the documents.

To add an ad hoc approver, click the appropriate Add Ad hoc [+] button for the approval step you would like the inserted ad hoc approval to follow.

16. Step 16

Use the lookup features or enter the User ID directly into the field.

Example shown here: " dr02330 " in the User ID field.

17. Step 17

Be sure that the Approver button is selected. This will route the transaction to the selected approver who must approve before it will go on to the next level of approval.

Note: The ad hoc approval won’t route to the inserted approver until the person who added the ad hoc approval approves the payment request themselves.

Click the Insert button.

18. Step 18

The selected ad hoc approver is added to the approval chain.

To exit, click the Close [x] button.

19. Step 19

The Pending tab is selected by default and displays the line(s) that you need to approve. Lines on the journal that have been distributed to other approvers can be reviewed by selecting the All tab.

20. Step 20

Review the ChartFields and amounts for the 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.