Journal entries

Most of what reaches your books gets there on its own: invoices, payments, vendor bills, stock received. A journal entry is for everything else your accountant posts by hand: monthly depreciation, a loan payment, an accrual at month end, moving an expense to the right account, closing the year.

Find it under Accounting, then Journal Entries.

Meridian's approach here is to guide rather than forbid. Where an entry could quietly make the books disagree with themselves, Meridian stops and explains what will happen. A person who's allowed to go ahead can, after confirming, and the confirmation is recorded with their name.

Who can do what

The last two columns can be changed for one person under Settings › Users ("Post journals to control accounts", "Post journals to inactive locations"), by someone who holds that permission themselves: a manager can't grant or remove them. Give your outside accountant their own Accounting login. It costs nothing extra, and every entry shows who posted it. Journal entries are part of the general ledger, so your plan has to include it.

Post an entry

Working from a spreadsheet? Copy the rows (account, description, debit, credit), click in any line and paste. The account column can be the account number, "number name", or the exact account name. A row whose account doesn't match anything stays marked with what you pasted, so you can pick the right one. A header row is skipped.

Not finished? Save draft keeps the entry without touching the books, even if it doesn't balance yet. Drafts are listed under Drafts. If someone else saved a draft after you opened it, Meridian says so instead of saving or posting over their changes; reload to see them.

Warnings, and why each one exists

The month is closed. Shown under the date, and Post is turned off. A closed month's figures have been reported; nothing new goes into it until someone reopens it (see Close an accounting period).

The month is before your latest closed month. Even a month that was never closed is treated as closed if a later month is: an entry there would change the opening balances of every month you've already closed. To post there, close that month and reopen it with a reason.

More than a year ahead. Refused: it's almost always a mistyped year.

Moving a control account. Renumbering a control account in the Chart of Accounts, or pointing a setting such as accounts receivable at a different account, needs the same "Post journals to control accounts" permission: otherwise someone without it could renumber AR, post to it under the new number, and put it back. Every account edit is recorded in Change history.

A control account. Accounts receivable, accounts payable, parts inventory, stock in transit, sales tax collected, customer credit, card and factoring receivables, core deposits, and any other account set on Settings › Ledger accounts whose balance a list in Meridian keeps (the AR aging, the payables list, the stock valuation…). A journal changes only the ledger, so that list stops matching the ledger by the amount until someone corrects it there. You need the "Post journals to control accounts" permission, and Meridian names which list will stop matching and asks you to confirm. The same applies to reversing such an entry and to saving a recurring journal that posts to one. The confirmation is recorded.

A turned-off location. Normally refused: entries there don't show on that location's current reports unless someone goes looking. An owner (or someone given "Post journals to inactive locations") who isn't limited to certain locations can use one after confirming, for example to clean up a closed store's balances. Someone limited to certain locations can post only to those; that can't be overridden. They also can't post an entry with no location (it would apply to the whole business), or reverse or discard an entry from another location.

A system account. Only an owner can post to an account marked as a system account.

When a second person must post

Settings › Money controls › Posting journal entries (off unless you turn it on). With it on:

• A new entry is saved for review instead of posted.
• Whoever created a draft, or changed anything on it, can't post it. Someone else who can post journals reviews and posts it. Opening a draft and posting it without changing it is fine.
• Recurring journals always make drafts (the "post automatically" choice is turned off while the setting is on), and Make next entry now makes a draft too. The person the recurring journal runs as can't post those drafts either.
• The Drafts tab is called Waiting for review, and an entry's page says whether you can post it.
• Reversing a posted entry needs a second person too. Undoing an approved entry by yourself would, in effect, post an entry nobody checked. Reverse saves the reversal for review; it can't be edited (it's the original with the sides swapped), only posted or discarded. It can't be posted by whoever saved it, or by whoever posted the entry it undoes, and the person who posted that entry can't discard someone else's reversal of it either. Before posting, the reviewer sees its date and what it does to the month. Until it posts, the original stays in the books and its page says a reversal is waiting.
• An accrual's automatic reversal on the 1st of next month is the exception: it was approved together with the accrual.
• A recurring journal that has entries waiting as drafts can't be deleted until they're posted or discarded.

Only an owner can change this setting, or any other money control. Each one restrains the people who would otherwise switch it off, so an Accounting login can see them but not change them. When an owner turns one off, the shop's other owners get a notification, and Change history records who changed what.

Reopening a closed month

Settings › Money controls › Reopening a closed period (owners change it). With it on, an Accounting login can close a month but not reopen it, so nobody can reopen a month, post into it and close it again alone. Shops created from October 2026 start with it on; existing shops keep what they had.

Accruals that undo themselves

Tick Reverse on the 1st of next period for an accrual. Posting it also posts the opposite entry dated the 1st of the following month, so the expense counts in the month it belongs to and drops out the next.

Fix a mistake: reverse it

A posted entry can't be edited or deleted. Open it and click Reverse, and pick the date: the same date (the month then nets to zero), the 1st of next month, or another day no earlier than the entry. Meridian posts the mirror entry and marks the original Reversed, with links between the two. Then post the corrected entry. An entry can be reversed once, and a reversal can't be reversed. A reversal copies the original exactly, including its locations, and may post to an account that has been turned off since, so undoing a mistake never waits on reactivating something.

Year-end closing entry

Tick Year-end closing entry on a new entry to move the year's income and expenses into retained earnings.

• It's dated the last day of your fiscal year (Settings › Money controls › Fiscal year). Meridian shows that date beside the checkbox.
• It uses only income and expense accounts, plus retained earnings.
• It should leave every income and expense account at zero for the year. If it wouldn't (a partial close, or entries posted after it was drafted), Meridian lists each account that would still carry a balance, with the amount left, and asks you to confirm.
• It doesn't reverse itself. To undo one, reverse it: the reversal is dated the same day and is a closing entry too, so the year's profit and loss and balance sheet keep agreeing.

The profit and loss leaves closing entries out, so a P&L for the year's last month still shows that month's results. The trial balance includes it and names it in its notes; choose the pre-closing trial balance to see the accounts before it.

Entries that repeat

Depreciation is the same every month, so set it up once. Click Recurring, then New recurring journal:

• Name it ("Monthly depreciation") and fill in the memo and lines as for any entry.
• Repeats every month or every quarter. The first entry date sets the day: pick the 15th and it runs on the 15th; pick the last day of a month and it runs on the last day of every month. Last entry on is optional.
• When an entry is due, Meridian either creates a draft for review or posts it automatically.

Entries are made early in the morning on their date. Make next entry now makes the next one straight away. If its date hasn't come yet, it's made as a draft dated its own date, and it can't be posted until that day. Entries already due behave as usual.

A recurring journal runs as the person who last saved it, checked again every time it runs. If that person loses permission to post journals, or to post to a control account the journal uses, or a location it uses is turned off after it was saved, it stops and the Recurring list says why. Someone with permission opens it, checks it, ticks Active and saves it; from then on it runs as them. If an entry would post into a closed month, nothing posts and the list shows the reason; it's tried again the next morning.

Loan payments

For a loan, choose A loan payment, split into interest and principal instead of entering lines. Fill in the balance owed now, the interest rate (percent per year), the payment each month or quarter, and three accounts: the loan account (a liability such as Notes Payable), the interest expense account, and the bank account it's paid from. Each list offers only accounts that fit, and Meridian refuses any other, then and every time a payment is made:

• Loan account: a liability, but not one Meridian keeps from its own records, such as accounts payable (the payables list would stop matching on every payment).
• Interest expense: an expense, but not a cost of goods account (interest isn't part of what the parts you sell cost).
• Paid from: a bank or cash account: an asset that isn't kept by Meridian's own records (receivables, inventory) and isn't a fixed asset.

If an account is changed later so it no longer fits (turned off, or moved to another type), the loan's next payment isn't made: the recurring journal stops and the Recurring list says why. Meridian shows the next three payments.

How the lender works out interest. Match your loan statement:

• The same rate every month (or quarter): the yearly rate ÷ 12 (÷ 4 quarterly), so every month's interest is worked out the same way. Most vehicle and equipment loans.
• By the day (actual/365): the yearly rate × the days since the previous payment date ÷ 365, so a 31-day month costs a little more than February. Common on bank lines and commercial loans. The days are counted between the scheduled payment dates (the 15th to the 15th, or month end to month end), and the preview shows them. The first entry counts back one period from its date; if the loan was funded or last paid on another day, set the recurring journal to create a draft and correct the first entry. A year always counts as 365 days, leap years too.

Loans that charge interest on a 360-day year (actual/360) aren't supported yet: their interest comes out about 1.4% higher than Meridian's figure. Correct those entries in the draft, or ask us.

Each entry works out that period's interest from the balance by that method, to the cent, takes the rest of the payment off the principal, and posts interest and principal as debits and the payment as a credit to the bank. The loan's balance goes down with each entry; the last payment is only what's left, and then the recurring journal stops.

If your lender's statement differs by a few cents, set it to create a draft for review and correct the lines before posting: changing the loan account's line changes the loan balance by the same amount. Discarding a drafted payment, or reversing a posted one, puts its principal back on the loan; payments already made after it were worked out on the lower balance, so check the next one (the Reverse box says so too). If that brings a paid-off loan back, it stays paused until you check its next date and resume it. While a payment is waiting as a draft, the loan account can't be changed and the loan can't be deleted.

Where entries show up

Journal entries are ordinary ledger entries: they appear on each account in the Chart of Accounts (the JE-… reference links back to the entry), in the trial balance and P&L (closing entries excepted, as above), and in the QuickBooks Desktop export.