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Overview

Journal approvers play an important role in ensuring the accuracy of the University’s financial reporting and maintaining effective internal controls. 

Approvers must understand their department’s financial and administrative operations and be knowledgeable about the transactions they’re approving.  It’s the approver’s responsibility to understand the purpose and restrictions of each COA segment and to make sure transactions posted to the General Ledger are allowable and reasonable, and that they follow UCD and UCOP policies, and federal and state regulations.

The person approving a transaction should have sufficient knowledge to vouch for validity of the transaction and ask questions when they don’t understand what they’re approving or if the supporting documentation needs additional detail.

Who are Journal Approvers

• Manual and spreadsheet journals have single approval, required by a defined group of approvers of the journal category department selected. 
• In Aggie Enterprise approval logic is not determined by the posting-level department(s) in the journal lines. 

How to Approve a Journal

• Detailed steps for journal approvers can be found in GL User Guide 3B – Journal Transactions for Approvers.

Journal Approval Checklist

Use the list below as a guide when reviewing transactions:

• A manual/spreadsheet journal in GL is appropriate
  • Expense Transfer journals should only be used if the transaction cannot be corrected in the source system and both sides of the journal use a GL, not POETAF, chart string.  Refer to the Knowledge Base Article, “Cost Transfers” for detailed information on how to process specific cost transfer scenarios.
• Either the debit or credit financial department is a child of the Journal Category Level D financial department
• The entity is appropriate for the financial department and the particular transaction.
  • This is particularly important for approvers who have financial department child values in both the Davis Campus (3110) entity and the ANR (3310) entity.
• The debit/credit funds match
• The natural account makes sense for the journal category
  • Revenue/fund transfers use revenue/fund transfer natural accounts (4xxxxx or 77500D or 77502D and below)
  • Expense transfers use expense natural accounts (5xxxxx or child of 77000D natural account)
• The journal is supported by documentation that provides evidence and a detailed description or explanation of the transaction.
• Attachments should not include personal identification information (PII) or protected health information (PHI).  All sensitive data such as account numbers or student or patient information should be redacted.