Control Accounts

A control account is an account that only documents can change. Its balance has to match the documents behind it: what your Customers owe you, what you owe your Vendors, or the stock in your Warehouses. If anyone could post a manual entry to it, the account would drift away from those documents, and you could no longer trust your customer balances, vendor balances or Inventory value.

CifraHQ locks four accounts and shows a lock icon next to them. You can still see these accounts and their balances, and documents keep posting to them as usual. What you cannot do is post to them by hand. Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable are closed to manual postings. Inventory Asset and Received Not Billed are closed to manual Journal Entries, with one exception: a journal entry whose every line is an Inventory account may post, because it only moves value from one Inventory account to another. Inventory accounts are the Inventory Asset account and each product group's Inventory account.

Where to find it

Go to Accounting > Chart of Accounts. A small lock icon appears next to the code of each control account. Move your mouse over the icon to read why the account is locked.

You meet the lock again when you choose an account for a line:

Open a draft journal entry in Accounting > General ledger, or an expense in Expenses > Expenses.
Go to the Lines tab and click Add line on the journal entry, or Add Line on the expense.
Look for greyed-out rows with a lock icon. Those accounts cannot be selected.

The lock icon shows in the Chart of Accounts list and in this account list. It does not show on an account's own page.

The four control accounts

There are two kinds, because they follow different rules.

Accounts	Locked in	What the lock says	Post these documents instead
Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable	Every posting that is not a customer or vendor document (the next table shows where you meet the lock)	Control account: posted only by customer and vendor documents	Invoices and Invoice Payments for receivables. Vendor Bills and Bill Payments for payables
Inventory Asset and Received Not Billed	Manual Journal Entries only	Control account: posted only by Inventory and purchasing documents	Inventory Receipts, deliveries, adjustments, Warehouse Transfers, production receipts and Vendor Bills

Where each lock applies

Where	Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable	Inventory Asset and Received Not Billed
Accounting > Chart of Accounts	Lock icon next to the code	Lock icon next to the code
Journal entry, Add line list	Greyed out, cannot be selected	Greyed out, cannot be selected
Journal entry, Post	Refused	Refused
Expense, Add Line list	Greyed out, cannot be selected	Not locked
Banking > Financial Institutions, open an institution, Deposit or Withdraw	Refused when you post	Not locked
Master Data > Accounting > Account Priming	Left out of the list; refused when you post	Left out of the list; refused when you post
Accounting > Fixed Assets	Refused when you post, if one of the asset's accounts is Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable	Not locked
Sales > Payments, deductions on an invoice payment	Refused when you post the payment	Not locked

The account list on an expense shows expense and liability accounts only, so Accounts Payable is normally the only locked account you will meet there. The Account list in the Deposit and Withdraw windows shows liability and income accounts only, so the same is true there. These windows, Fixed Assets and Invoice Payments do not show lock icons. CifraHQ refuses the posting instead. Account Priming does not list control accounts at all, and it refuses them too if one is sent to it.

What you see when you try

In an account list

When you click a locked account, nothing is added. A red message appears above the list:

Account	Message
Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable	This is a control account. It is posted only by customer and vendor documents, so it cannot be used here.
Inventory Asset, Received Not Billed	This is a control account. It is posted only by Inventory and purchasing documents, so it cannot be used in a manual entry. On a journal entry these two accounts can be picked, so you can move value between Inventory accounts; CifraHQ checks the whole entry when you post.

When you post

CifraHQ checks again when you post. On a journal entry, the page shows Error posting followed by the reason. Deposits and withdrawals, Fixed Assets and Invoice Payments refuse the posting with the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable message. Account Priming refuses Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable with that message, and Inventory Asset and Received Not Billed with the Inventory message.

Account	Message
Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable	Accounts receivable and accounts payable can only be posted by customer and vendor documents (Invoices, Invoice Payments, bills and Bill Payments). Use one of those documents instead; Opening Balances are loaded as open Invoices and bills.
Inventory Asset, Received Not Billed	Inventory and received-not-billed can only be posted by Inventory and purchasing documents (Inventory Receipts, deliveries, adjustments, transfers, production and Vendor Bills). Use one of those documents instead, so the ledger keeps matching your stock. To move value from one Inventory account to another, put only Inventory accounts on the entry.

On a journal entry you normally do not reach this message, because the account list stops you first. You can reach it if a locked account is already on a line (for example, on an older draft), or if the lock icons did not load. Click Try Again to return to the entry, remove that line with Remove in the line's menu, add a line with the right account, and click Post again.

What to do instead

You want to...	Do this
Bill a customer, or record a payment from a customer	Post an Invoice, then record the Invoice Payment
Record a vendor's bill, or a payment to a vendor	Post a Vendor Bill, then record the Bill Payment
Correct a customer or vendor document	Void the invoice, or issue a credit note or debit memo. CifraHQ posts the correcting entry for you
Undo the journal entry of a customer or vendor document	Do it from the document, not from the journal entry. Reverse on that journal entry is refused and tells you to reverse it from the document
Start with open receivables and payables	Enter them as open Invoices and Vendor Bills, not as account balances
Change your stock	Post an inventory receipt, delivery, adjustment, warehouse transfer or production receipt
Record goods you received before the vendor's bill arrives	Post the Inventory receipt. The goods wait in Received Not Billed until the vendor bill clears them

What is not locked

Every other account. CifraHQ locks the accounts you chose for four settings, and nothing else. To see them, go to Setup > System > Configuration and open Business > Accounting. The settings are Accounts Receivable (under Sales), Accounts Payable and Received Not Billed Account (under Purchasing), and Inventory Asset (under Inventory). If you choose a different account for one of them, the lock follows the setting. A setting with no account chosen locks nothing.
A product group's own Inventory account (the Inventory account field on the product group). Inventory documents post to it, but it is not locked, unless it is the same account you chose for Inventory Asset. You can post to it by hand, but that can make your ledger stop matching your stock, so prefer Inventory documents.
Inventory Asset and Received Not Billed outside manual Journal Entries. Only manual Journal Entries and Account Priming refuse them. Expenses and deposits and withdrawals do not.

Only administrators see the **Setup** menu. If an account you expect to be locked shows no lock icon, ask an administrator to check that it is the account chosen for the matching setting.

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