Every accounting activity is represented in the General Ledger system by a detail transaction. Each transaction is in effect a one-sided assignment of funds. To assure that the overall General Ledger remains in balance, batches must be zero balanced before they can be posted to the General Ledger. For audit trial purposes, the system requires at least one Batch Register be printed after the last entry or change is made and the batch is in balance, and before the batch can be posted.
Each batch is assigned to an accounting period. All transactions in the batch are posted to that period independent of their effective date. Effective date reporting is available through queries to the detail Transaction History.
A batch can be assigned to any defined accounting period. Normally only 12 periods are used per year, however the database design does not contain any such restriction.