Overview

When the native General Ledger is enabled for your account, Luminous compiles journal entries automatically for every significant inventory movement. You do not need to create these entries manually — they are produced each time you run or recompile a GL period.

All entries are visible under Reports → Accounting → General Ledger. Click any primary journal line to open its support schedule and trace the amount back to individual source documents.

Posting rules and what they book

Goods Received

Trigger: A receiving report is posted against a purchase order.

Entry:

  • Debit — Inventory (the asset arrives on your books)
  • Credit — Received Not Billed (you owe the supplier, but no bill has arrived yet)

Basis date: The date shown on the receiving report.

Supporting detail: The debit leg is scheduled at receipt-line grain (one row per goods line and one per freight/duty line). The credit leg carries one row for the receiving report as a whole.

When the matching supplier bill is later released, the payables rules clear the Received Not Billed credit, netting the account to zero for a fully received and billed order.

Cost of Goods Sold (Shipment)

Trigger: A fulfillment shipment is completed.

Entry:

  • Debit — Cost of Goods Sold (the expense of inventory that left)
  • Credit — Inventory (the asset is relieved)

Basis date: The ship date.

Amounts: Derived from Luminous's FIFO inventory cost engine, so the amount reflects what those specific goods actually cost — not an average or a catalog price.

Note: Because shipment volumes can be very high, this rule produces one combined entry per compiled period (rather than one entry per shipment), with the full shipment-by-shipment detail in the supporting schedule. Every shipment is still individually tracked for idempotency — a shipment already booked in a locked period is never re-booked.

Landed Cost Variance

Trigger: A post-receipt cost correction arrives — for example, a freight invoice that exceeds the estimate, or a supplier restating a unit price.

Entry (correction raises cost):

  • Debit — Landed Cost Variance (the additional expense)
  • Credit — Inventory

Entry (correction lowers cost): The legs are reversed automatically.

Basis date: Derived from the receiving report date for the goods being corrected.

Inventory Shrinkage

Trigger: An inventory adjustment is posted with a negative net value — stock counted short, written off, or found defective.

Entry:

  • Debit — Shrinkage (the loss, expensed)
  • Credit — Inventory (the asset that is no longer there)

Basis date: The effective date on the inventory adjustment.

Supporting detail: Scheduled at adjustment-line grain.

Inventory Overage

Trigger: An inventory adjustment is posted with a positive net value — stock found during a count that was not previously on the books.

Entry:

  • Debit — Inventory (the asset is added)
  • Credit — Inventory Overage (the gain)

Basis date: The effective date on the inventory adjustment.

Supporting detail: Scheduled at adjustment-line grain.

Cross-month and late-arrival behavior

You do not need to re-open a prior period when a receiving report or adjustment arrives late. Luminous's compile engine automatically dates late-arriving facts into the current open period while preserving the original document date in the supporting schedule, so auditors can see when the fact originated.

If a locked period already contains an entry for a particular document, that document is never re-booked in a later period — the idempotency guard prevents double-posting regardless of how many times you recompile.

Accounts used

The specific chart-of-account codes that these rules post to are configured in your account's posting-role mappings (set up by your Luminous account team). To see which account code a rule is posting to in a given period, open the Entries view on the General Ledger page and filter by Posting rule.