Stop journal entries from posting unchecked. Send entries through a mandatory review step so a second set of eyes confirms every debit and credit before the ledger is updated — and every decision is on record permanently.
Download Free TrialWhen a bookkeeper or staff accountant can create a journal entry and post it to the ledger in the same step, there is no control between the input and the output. Mistakes go undetected until month-end reviews — or worse, until an auditor finds them. Intentional errors are equally undetected. For businesses with more than one person touching the books, that is an unacceptable risk.
BizBooks Pro solves this by separating the act of creating a journal entry from the act of posting it. Entries are created as drafts, submitted for review, and only posted after an authorized approver has signed off. The result is a double-check on every entry that affects your account balances, general ledger, and financial statements.
The controls built into this workflow reflect the segregation-of-duties requirements under GAAP guidance, the COSO internal control framework, and the audit documentation standards expected in both review and audit engagements. For companies subject to SOX Section 404, the journal entry approval audit trail directly supports management's assessment of internal controls over financial reporting.
Staff enter the journal entry and save it as a draft. The accounts are not yet affected — the entry exists in the system but is clearly marked as unposted.
The preparer adds a note and submits the entry. It immediately appears in the approver's queue and the approver receives a notification to take action.
The designated reviewer examines each line, checks the account coding, and makes a decision — approving the entry or sending it back with written feedback.
Approved entries are posted and reflected in account balances, the general ledger, and all financial reports. Rejected entries return to draft for correction.
Each journal entry carries a status that tells everyone on the team exactly where it stands in the process at any moment.
Approvers have a dedicated inbox showing every entry waiting for their decision. No digging through the full transaction list to find pending items.
Rejection is only actionable when the preparer knows what to fix. BizBooks Pro requires a comment on every rejection so corrections can be made without back-and-forth.
Every company has different team structures and risk tolerances. Configure the approval rules to match your organization exactly.
Every time a journal entry changes status — submitted, approved, rejected, resubmitted, posted — BizBooks Pro records the event with the user's name, the timestamp, and any comment that was provided. These records are written once and cannot be edited or deleted. When your auditor requests a listing of journal entries with preparer and reviewer identification, you produce it from BizBooks Pro in seconds rather than reconstructing it from email chains.
For accounting firms, the audit trail is equally valuable for client work. Partners can review staff-prepared entries across multiple client companies from a single queue. Each approval documents the partner's review in the client's permanent records — satisfying peer review requirements and creating the quality control documentation that review standards require.
The approval workflow is most valuable not because it catches fraud — though it does make fraud substantially harder — but because it catches ordinary mistakes before they cascade. A transposed account number, a sign error on a credit memo, an allocation to the wrong department: these errors are easy to make and costly to unwind once they are posted. A reviewer looking at the entry fresh catches things the preparer glossed over. That second-look discipline is what the approval workflow institutionalizes in your accounting process.
You control this in company settings. You can require approval for all entries from certain roles (such as bookkeepers) while allowing accountants or managers to post directly. If your company is small and all entries are created by the owner, you can leave approval off entirely. The feature scales with your team's needs.
Once posted, a journal entry follows the standard rules for posted transactions in BizBooks Pro — it requires a reversing entry rather than direct editing. The original entry and its approval record remain intact in the audit trail. Admins can create a reversing entry if a posted entry needs to be corrected, and that reversing entry goes through the approval process just like any other entry.
BizBooks Pro admin users have the ability to override the approval requirement and post directly when circumstances require it. Every override is logged in the audit trail with the admin's name and timestamp, so nothing bypasses documentation even in urgent situations. This keeps you flexible while maintaining a complete record.
Auditors testing journal entries typically request a complete list of entries made during the period, the name of the person who prepared each one, evidence that a second person reviewed each one, and any written authorization. BizBooks Pro produces all of this in a single report exportable to CSV or PDF. The approval comments serve as the written authorization documentation auditors require under AU-C Section 240.
Yes. Each company in BizBooks Pro has its own approval settings and its own approval queue. Users with access to multiple companies can view the approval queue for each company separately. For accounting firms with many clients, approvers can work through client entries without the queues from different companies mixing together.
Download BizBooks Pro free for 30 days. Enable journal entry approval for your team in minutes and start building the documentation trail that auditors and regulators expect.