Ledger Controls: Write-offs, Sensitive Accounts, VAT Return, Budgets and QuickBooks

Writing off a debt nobody will pay is the classic place for a quiet loss to hide, so AWRA splits it between two people. The Write-offs screen is at /accounting/write-offs. Someone with the request write-offs permission fills in Request a write-off: choose an open Invoice, enter the Amount and a Reason, and click Send for approval. The amount is in the invoice’s own currency and cannot be more than what is still owed. Sending it changes nothing: the invoice stays owed and the ledger is untouched until approval.

A different person with the approve write-offs permission sees Approve and Reject on the pending row. Rejecting needs a reason. The person who asked can never approve their own request, even in a small team, so a workspace needs at least two people able to act. Approval posts Bad Debt Expense against Accounts Receivable at the invoice’s own exchange rate, so it clears exactly what the invoice put on, and it can never post twice. The invoice balance falls, and an invoice written off in full is closed as written off and leaves receivables. Output VAT is left as it is: claiming VAT back on a bad debt is a separate return adjustment with its own conditions.

In practice: a Nakuru hardware wholesaler has a KES 86,500 invoice to a contractor who has closed down. The credit controller requests a write-off of the full balance with the reason “Customer closed down; no assets to recover”. The finance manager checks the aging report, approves it, and the invoice leaves the receivables list. If the contractor later pays part of it, the history shows who asked, who approved and why, which is what the auditor will ask for.

The Dimensions screen at /accounting/dimensions holds three controls for people who manage accounts. Under Sensitive accounts, Mark sensitive on any account, typically cash, bank, control and equity accounts. A manual journal touching a sensitive account always needs a second signature from someone with the sensitive-journal approval permission who did not draft it, even when journal approval is otherwise switched off. Only where nobody else holds that permission may the author approve it, and the audit log records that. Under Required dimensions, choose an Account and what it Must carry (Department, Branch, Project or Cost center) and click Add rule. A manual journal or supplier bill line on that account is then refused without the tag. Cost centers are added on the same screen with a Code and a Name.

Postings AWRA makes on its own, such as a sale or a payment, are never stopped by a tag rule. Those, and anything that slipped through before a rule existed, are caught by the ledger integrity checks on Accounting, then Reconciliation. The card reads Ledger integrity checks pass, or the number failing, and lists each check with Count, Amount and Detail, all of which should read zero: ledger lines outside any posting, postings that do not balance, Accounts Receivable against open customer documents, Accounts Payable against open supplier bills and unbilled receipts, settled payments with no posting, bank statement lines not yet explained (failing once any is over 30 days old), lines missing a required tag, and sensitive-account journals with one signature in the last 90 days.

In practice: an NGO in Gulu marks its bank and petty cash accounts sensitive and requires a Project tag on every donor-funded expense account. When a programme officer drafts a journal moving UGX 4.2 million between bank accounts, it waits for the finance manager’s second signature. A month later the integrity card shows two lines missing a required tag: automatic payroll postings made before the rule was added. The accountant reclassifies them with a journal that carries the project tag, and the check reads zero again before the month is closed.

The VAT return screen is at /accounting/tax-returns. Choose a Period and click Show. AWRA builds the return from the period’s documents: output tax from issued invoices and till sales, less credit notes and till returns; input tax from approved supplier bills. It shows Output tax, Input tax and Net VAT payable, a By category table (standard, zero-rated, exempt, import and reverse charge), and a list of every document. Tie to the ledger compares those totals with the movement on Taxes Payable and Input Tax Recoverable; a difference is shown as it is, never netted away. Exceptions lists what to check first, such as a foreign invoice with no exchange rate, tax charged to an exempt customer, or a standard-rated line carrying no tax.

Once the period has ended, someone with the prepare tax returns permission clicks Prepare and lock. The figures are frozen in the return and the period is locked for tax: postings to the tax accounts dated inside it are refused, while the month stays open for everything else until it is closed. Export workbook downloads an Excel file with Summary, Sales, Purchases and Exceptions sheets. AWRA does not send the return anywhere. You file it with KRA on iTax yourself, then a person with the file tax returns permission enters the Acknowledgement reference and clicks Mark filed.

A prepared return that is not yet filed can be reopened with a Reason to reopen, which unlocks the period so the figures can be recomputed. A filed return stays filed; a correction goes into the next period or an amended return. Withholding tax is shown beside the return from its own register and is not added into VAT. In practice: an Eldoret supermarket prepares October on 3 November, sees an exception for a reverse-charge software subscription, records the reverse charge, reopens the prepared return, prepares it again, files on iTax on the 18th and records the acknowledgement number.

GL Budgets, in the Accounting quick actions, plans twelve months for revenue and expense accounts. New GL budget asks for a Name, a First month, optional Department, Branch, Project or Cost center to budget one part of the organization, an Owner, Alert at (% of the year’s budget) and Notes, then an annual figure or twelve monthly figures per account. The budget page compares Budget to date with Actual to date, with Variance and %, and adds two columns for expense lines. Committed is money promised that has not reached the ledger yet, on the account each line will be booked to. Available is the annual budget less actual and committed.

Committed has two parts. Orders: an open purchase order counts in full while nothing has arrived, and only its unreceived balance once part has, because what was received is already booked as actual; amounts are net of tax and converted to base currency at the rate on the quotation, and a foreign order with no rate is listed rather than added. Requests: an approved request with no order raised from it counts at its estimated value on a department budget, and stops counting once an order is raised, so nothing is counted twice. Stock items are left out, because receiving them is inventory, not expense. When an expense line’s actual plus committed spend reaches the alert threshold, the page shows a warning listing the lines, and the owner is told once a week by email and in the bell and asked to review.

The review is recorded on the budget itself. Under Last review, type a Review note and click Mark reviewed; the page then shows the date, who reviewed it and the note. In practice: a Nairobi media company sets an annual travel budget of KES 1.8 million with the head of operations as owner and an alert at 85%. By September, KES 1.2 million has been spent and two open purchase orders for flights add KES 360,000. The line passes 85%, she is alerted, cancels one trip and marks the budget reviewed with “Q4 trips cut to one”.

If your organization keeps its books in QuickBooks Online, AWRA pushes suppliers, items and purchase orders to it from Settings, then QuickBooks, with the Sync Vendors, Sync Items and Sync Purchase Orders buttons, and since 30 October 2026 tax codes, customers, issued invoices and payments received with Sync Tax Codes, Sync Customers, Sync Invoices and Sync Payments. Before a push starts, AWRA checks for the mapping problems that would make QuickBooks reject records one by one, and refuses the push with a list of what to fix. QuickBooks must be connected, every supplier and item name must be unique, no supplier may have a blank name, and suppliers on purchase orders must already be in QuickBooks.

Every supplier, item and purchase order then has its own sync status, shown in the Sync status panel with the last error and how many tries it has had. Failures are retried automatically every 15 minutes, with a wait that doubles after each attempt, up to five attempts. After that the record stays failed and everyone who manages integrations is told once a week, by email and in the bell, until the list is empty. Fix the record or the mapping, then click Retry failed now to try again at once.

Compare balances with QuickBooks opens QuickBooks against the ledger: each QuickBooks account’s balance beside the AWRA account with the same name, and the Difference, largest first. AWRA pushes documents, not journals, so a difference usually means a posting made in one system only. An account with no AWRA namesake is listed as unmatched rather than counted as zero. In practice: a Kampala importer’s item sync is refused because two items are both called “Cement 50kg”. Renaming one to “Cement 50kg (Tororo)” lets the push through, and the reconcile page shows one account apart by a bank charge entered only in QuickBooks.