Certified Statements, Drill-Down and the Board Pack

Every automatic posting in AWRA, whether a sale, a bill, a receipt, payroll or depreciation, is one numbered posting that balances and cannot be made twice for the same source. On the income statement, balance sheet, cash flow and trial balance, an account name is a link. It opens that account’s ledger for the same date range: Opening, Debits, Credits and Closing at the top, then each line with its Date, Posting, Description, Debit, Credit and running Balance. A Sensitive pill shows when the account is marked sensitive. Change From and To and click Show to look at another range.

The Posting column links to the posting page. It shows the posting’s kind (manual, reversal or system), its date and module, Came from with the source document, any posting it Reverses or is Reversed by, every line with its account, and the totals. Open source document takes you to the invoice, supplier bill, POS sale, payment, asset, bank line or stock transfer behind it. Postings made before sources were recorded say so rather than guessing. The other way round, a customer invoice, a supplier bill, a POS sale and an asset each show a Ledger postings panel listing what that document wrote to the books.

In practice: the board of a Dar es Salaam clinic asks why Repairs and Maintenance in June is TZS 9.6 million against a usual 3 million. The accountant clicks Repairs and Maintenance on the income statement for June, sees one line of TZS 6.8 million, clicks its posting and then Open source document. It is a supplier bill for the generator overhaul, with the quotation attached. Three clicks answered a question that used to take an afternoon of searching through files.

The Certified statements screen is at /accounting/certified-statements. Someone with the certify financial statements permission sees a form with From, To and an optional Note, and a Certify button. Certifying freezes that period’s trial balance, income statement, balance sheet and cash flow exactly as they stand, saves them with a SHA-256 checksum, and writes it to the audit log. A certified version is never recalculated: a late journal changes the live statements, not the certified ones. The table below lists every version with its Period, Version, who certified it and when, the Note, and a Status of Current or Superseded.

Open a version to see its figures, a Current or Superseded pill and its checksum. Each time it is opened, AWRA compares it with the ledger as it stands now. If nothing has been posted into the period since, it says the ledger still agrees with this version. If something has, it says the ledger has moved since this was certified, counts the figures that differ, and lists each one under What changed with the certified value and today’s value. To bring them back into line, certify the same period again: that makes version 2 and marks version 1 superseded, and both are kept.

In practice: a Nairobi SACCO certifies Q3 on 15 October with the note “Presented to the board on 20 October”. On 2 November an auditor’s adjustment for KES 310,000 of accrued interest is posted back into September after a reopen. The Q3 version now shows that the ledger has moved, with interest income and retained earnings listed under What changed. The finance manager certifies Q3 again as version 2 with the note “After audit adjustment”, and the board minutes can point to whichever version they approved.

A certified version has a Commentary card. Someone who may certify can click Write commentary, and AI writes three to five plain sentences on the results, the balance sheet, cash and one point for the board to discuss. It works only from the certified figures, plus the previous certified period’s revenue and net income when there is one, and is told never to invent a figure or a cause. The text is stored with the version and does not change afterwards. If your organization has switched AI off for accounting, or no AI provider answers, no commentary is written and the page says so; you can write your own in the board papers instead.

Board pack PDF downloads the version as a PDF with its version number, who certified it, the full checksum, the commentary when there is one, and the statements. CSV gives the same figures as a spreadsheet-friendly file. To send the latest certified version on a schedule, use the saved filter bar on the Certified statements screen: type a name into Save current filters as and click Save. The saved chip then shows a schedule form with External emails, Users, Roles, Cadence (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly or Chosen weekdays), Formats and Time, and a Schedule button. Each delivery sends whichever version is current for the most recent period. Choosing XLSX sends the CSV, because the board pack has no Excel layout.

In practice: a Kisumu agricultural cooperative wants its board to receive the latest numbers before every monthly meeting. The accountant saves a filter called “Board pack”, schedules it Monthly at 08:00 in PDF to the Board role and the external auditor’s email, and certifies each month after closing it. When she re-certifies a month after a correction, the next delivery carries the new version automatically, so nobody is sent a superseded set.

On the Certified statements screen, someone with the export audit evidence permission sees an Auditor evidence pack form with From and To and a Build and download button. It produces one ZIP for that date range containing: every ledger line, every posting with who drafted, approved and posted it, the period closes, the reopen requests, the close evidence packs, the certified statements, the ledger integrity checks, and the accounting audit log.

The ZIP also contains a manifest listing the SHA-256 checksum of every file inside it. A copy of the ZIP is kept, and its own checksum is written to the audit log when it is built. That gives an auditor two ways to rely on it: each file can be checked against the manifest, and the ZIP as a whole can be checked against the audit log entry, so a file edited after it left AWRA can be detected.

In practice: the external auditors of an Addis Ababa manufacturer ask for evidence on the year to 30 June. The financial controller builds the pack for 1 July to 30 June and uploads it to the auditors’ portal. When the audit senior asks who approved a large manual journal in March, the answer is already in the postings file; when she asks whether March was reopened, the reopen requests file shows the request, its reason and the approver. The questions are answered from the file without a meeting.