Akanni Transports in Porto-Novo has closed its year. Afiavi Hounkpatin, who keeps its books, now has to produce the yearly statements in the official SYSCOHADA layout: balance sheet, income statement, cash flow and the notes that go with them. Her trainee Comlan Adjovi helps with the notes. This page shows how they read the statements and write the notes. The same steps apply to any business whose books follow this layout. The statements here are read from the books and change as the books change. To freeze them for submission, see File annual statements. The management reports are in Accounting reports.

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Who works where

Afiavi works in the organization space of her firm, on the book of her client account, if she has access to that book. The client account can read the same statements from the client space, on its own book.

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Read the three statements

For the year she wants, Afiavi opens the official balance sheet, the official income statement and the official cash flow. Each one shows the lines of the official layout, with the figures of the year and, when the book has an earlier year, the figures of that previous year. When she wants to see which accounts feed a line, she asks for them along with the statement. If an account has activity that no line of the layout claims, the statement is refused with an error naming the account. Afiavi fixes the account, then reads the statement again. Nothing is silently left out.

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Write the notes

The notes go with the statements. Comlan opens the list of notes for the year and sees each note with its content. He opens one note with View a statement note to see its figures or its text. Not every note is typed. Some are computed from the books and some are taken from other sources. Only the notes meant to be filled in by hand accept input. Comlan writes such a note with Save a statement note. A later save replaces the whole previous content of that note, and the earlier text is not kept. The system records who saved it last.

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The rules

  • Listing the notes also needs the permission to list them, viewing one the permission to retrieve them, and saving one the permission to update them.
  • The accounting module must be purchased for the organization.
  • A fiscal year of the book is required for every statement and every note. In the organization space the caller needs an access grant on the book; in the client space the book is the client account’s own.
  • The balance sheet reads the cumulative balances including the posted closing entries. The income statement excludes them. When the balance sheet does not balance, or when the cash at the end of the year differs from the opening cash plus the change shown by the cash flow, the statement reports it in a coherence section instead of refusing.
  • The previous year is the most recent fiscal year of the same book that ends before the requested year starts.
  • A note code must exist in the catalogue, otherwise the answer is 404. When the catalogue itself is not defined, the call is refused.
  • A computed or sourced note cannot be saved: only a note filled in by hand accepts input. The saved content cannot exceed 65,536 bytes.
  • The first save of a note for a book and a year creates its entry. There is one entry per book, year and note, so two people saving the same note at the same time do not create two.
  • The list and the view of a note return a plain JSON answer. Saving a note answers with no content by default, unless the caller asks for the entry.
  • In the organization space, the address of a note holds the book first and the note code last. The reference page may name the first part differently.

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