Work in the Journal: manual postings and Storno

The Journal in the Ledger (Hauptbuch) shows every posting of your GmbH or UG in date order, with the debit and credit account, amount, booking text, source and tax treatment. It is the audit trail of your books. Make each correction as a posting of its own, so you and your advisor can always see what was booked and what was corrected.

Find and understand a posting

1. Select the fiscal year and open Journal.
2. You can filter by account, by booking text or entry number, by source (transactions, opening balances, annual close, manual entries, payroll) or by tax treatment, and sort by date, amount or entry number.
3. Open a row. The posting details show where it comes from: a bank, imported or manual transaction, asset depreciation, payroll, the DATEV import, an opening balance or a manual entry. For a transaction you can open the source transaction directly.

Each posting has a status. It shows Open while the fiscal year is open and Locked after you lock the annual close.

Correct a posting at its source

Most postings are generated from a source. Correct the source and Norman updates the posting. Do not add a manual posting to offset a generated one, because the source stays wrong and the correction counts twice once someone fixes it.

Closing entries belong to the annual close. While the close is open, correct a wrong closing entry there with an opposite closing entry.

Add a manual posting

Use a manual posting for an adjustment or reclassification (Umbuchung) that no transaction covers. Record purchases and sales as transactions, not as manual postings.

1. In Journal, choose + Manual entry.
2. Enter the booking date, the debit account (Soll), the credit account (Haben) and the amount. The accounts come from your chart of accounts. + Add ledger account creates a company-specific account that does not appear as a transaction category.
3. Choose the Tax treatment. A pure reclassification usually has none. If the posting affects VAT, its treatment, country scope and rate decide how it is reported, so check the VAT preview afterwards.
4. Write a Booking text that explains the posting and attach the Supporting document. The form also saves a posting without a document. Under GoBD, every posting still needs a document or an explanation a third party can follow.
5. Choose Create entry. The posting appears in the Journal, and Created by shows who booked it.

A correction of the input VAT amount alone is only possible for a documented German input VAT bookkeeping error. Select it under Amount represents, book it against exactly one input VAT account and explain the error in the booking text. This form does not support adjustments under §17 or §15a UStG.

A manual posting needs an open fiscal year:

• In a locked year, book the correction in an open period.
• In a year taken over from DATEV, the period up to the cutover date belongs to the import. Book after the cutover date, or correct the source and run the import again.

Correct a manual posting with a Storno

Do not change or delete a saved posting. GoBD requires the original booking to stay traceable, so a mistake is corrected with a Storno (reversal) and a new posting.

1. Open the posting in the Journal and choose Create reversal.
2. Confirm. Norman books the opposite posting with debit and credit swapped and the same amount, date, tax treatment and documents. Its booking text starts with "Storno:". The two postings link to each other under Reversal of and Reversed by and cancel out in the balances and the VAT figures.
3. Add a new manual posting with the correct values.

Good to know:

• Only manual postings that a person created can be reversed. For every other posting, correct its source as shown above.
• A posting can be reversed only once. A Storno is not reversed again. Book a new posting instead.
• The Storno takes the original booking date, so that period must still be open.

Locked years

When you lock the annual close, its postings get the status Locked and their final journal numbers. Norman cannot reverse a locked posting. Book the correction in the next open fiscal year and agree it with your tax advisor.

Next: prepare the annual close.