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Documentation Index

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Subledger drift is a CONTROL signal, not a posting prompt. A variance always means a source record, a posting rule, or a historical import needs review. Never close the variance with a blind journal entry; always understand the root cause first.

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What Subledger Drift Means

Arcus tracks two views of the same money:
  1. The subledger is the operational detail. AR = the sum of open invoice balances. AP = the sum of open vendor bill balances. Inventory = the sum of on-hand x weighted-average-cost across every location. Sales Tax Payable = tax collected on posted invoices not yet remitted.
  2. The GL control account is the rolled-up financial statement view, driven entirely by posted journal entries.
In a clean system the two views must be equal to the penny. A non-zero variance means a posting was made directly to the control account without a matching source record, or a source record changed without a balancing journal entry, or a historical import landed with mismatched halves.

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Where Arcus Surfaces Drift

SurfaceWhen it firesWhat it shows
Dashboard bannerAny open browser session, top of dashboardAmber (>10drift)orred(>10 drift) or red (>100 drift) card naming each out-of-balance subledger and the dollar gap
Period-Close pre-closeOperator opens “Close Period” modalInline amber banner listing every subledger out of balance, with the option to acknowledge and close anyway
GL Reconciliation pageAccounting > GL ReconciliationFull per-subledger detail: GL balance, subledger balance, variance, and a CSV export per subledger for offline review
Period close response payloadBackend emits gl.subledger_drift_detected event on every period closeLogged to the GL integrity check log for audit trail

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Common Root Causes

The most common cause. An operator removed a customer payment from the UI but the original DR Cash / CR AR journal entry was not reversed. Result: GL AR is lower than the subledger by the deleted payment amount.Fix: find the missing payment via Accounting > Account Ledger filtered by the Cash account around the suspect date. Either re-post the payment if the deletion was an error, or post a corrective JE DR AR / CR Cash referencing the original payment id in the description.
A developer or admin ran a direct SQL UPDATE on orders.balance_due or accounts.credit_balance outside the canonical helper. The subledger column changed but no journal entry was posted.Fix: identify the SQL change via the activity log. If the manual UPDATE was correct, post a corrective JE to align the GL. If it was an error, reverse the column UPDATE through the canonical workflow (re-post the payment, re-issue the credit memo, etc.).
A customer payment was applied to multiple invoices but the application rows do not sum to the payment amount. This drifts AR subledger but not GL AR (the GL only sees the gross payment).Fix: open Accounting > AR Management, find the payment, and review its application rows. Re-apply the unapplied remainder, or post a writeoff for the unallocated amount.
A positive inventory adjustment posted with unit_cost = NULL against a fresh product whose weighted-average-cost was $0. The inventory units increased but the inventory subledger value did not, while the GL inventory control account may have posted at the system default.Fix: open Inventory > Adjustments, find the adjustment, and post a follow-up adjustment with the correct unit cost to bring the WAC back in line. The canonical helper now blocks this scenario (ZeroCostAdjustmentError) but historical entries may exist.
An invoice was marked voided in the UI but the original posting JE was not reversed. GL AR overstates by the voided invoice amount.Fix: look up the voided invoice via Orders filtered by invoice_status = voided. Confirm the original posting JE exists and has NO reversal entry. Post a reversing JE DR Sales Revenue / CR AR for the invoice total (or whatever the original posting pattern was) and reference the invoice number in the description.
A migration or one-time data load posted journal entries where debits did not equal credits across the population (each individual JE was balanced, but the population as a whole drifted because some source records were skipped or duplicated).Fix: export both the subledger detail and the GL transaction log for the migration window (CSV from GL Reconciliation + Account Ledger). Diff line-by-line in Excel to find the missing or duplicated rows. Post a single corrective JE covering the net difference, with a description citing the migration batch id.

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Investigation Workflow

1

Confirm the drift on GL Reconciliation

Open Accounting > GL Reconciliation and click Run Reconciliation. Verify the subledger and GL numbers shown on the dashboard banner match the reconciliation page. Refresh once if the numbers are stale.
2

Export the subledger detail

Click the Export CSV button on the variant’s row (AR, AP, Inventory, or Tax). The CSV lists every source record (invoice, bill, balance, posted-tax order) with its individual contribution to the subledger total.
3

Export the GL detail

Open Accounting > Account Ledger and select the matching control account (1300 AR, 2000 AP, 1400 Inventory, 2200 Sales Tax Payable). Filter to the same date range. Export the journal entry lines.
4

Diff the two CSVs

Subtract subledger total from GL total. Sort each CSV by date and walk forward looking for the period when the two views diverged. Common pattern: one date where GL jumped without a matching subledger row, or vice versa.
5

Identify the bad source record

Once the divergence date is known, open the source workflow (the payment, the invoice, the inventory adjustment, the bill) and inspect the activity log. The activity log will name the operator and the action that broke the link.
6

Post the corrective journal entry

Open Accounting > Journal Entries > New. Use a description like “Corrective JE to align AR subledger with GL control 1300 — ref invoice INV-12345 voided 2026-05-01 without reversal”. Both legs must cite the source record id and the root cause in plain English.Send for approval per your entity’s je_approval_threshold policy. Re-run GL Reconciliation after the JE posts to verify the variance is back to zero.

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When To Get Help

Do not post a corrective JE if any of the following are true. Escalate to the accounting lead or to Arcus support first.
  • The variance is greater than 10% of the control account balance.
  • The variance spans more than one closed accounting period.
  • The drift appeared without any operator change (no activity log entries in the variance window).
  • The same subledger has drifted more than once in the same fiscal year.
  • The control account is involved in an external audit, tax filing, or bank reconciliation that has already been signed off.
In any of these cases the corrective JE may need to be paired with a prior- period restatement, a tax amendment, or a bank-reconciliation reopen. The accounting lead owns the decision; the operator owns the documentation.
  • GL Reconciliation and Integrity — the full reconciliation surface and how to read the variance cards.
  • Journal Entries — how to post a corrective JE through the approval workflow.
  • Account Ledger — how to inspect transaction history on one GL account.
  • Period Close — how the pre-close checklist warns on outstanding subledger drift before period close.