Working with Journals

Journals are a fundamental tool in accounting, used to record transactions. In this tutorial, we will cover how to create a new journal, modify an existing one, query a journal, and lock a journal to prevent posting.

Every ledger in Twisp starts with a default journal, but you can create as many additional journals as needed to suit your particular accounting structure.

Getting started

The easiest way to interact with the Twisp GraphQL API is to login to the Twisp Console and use the GraphiQL tool.

If you prefer to use your own GraphQL client, you can send authenticated requests to the Twisp API endpoint.

To seed your setup with some example accounts, sets, and tran codes, you can use the Example Setup.

Create a new journal

You can create a new journal using the createJournal mutation.

Copymutation CreateJournal($journalGLId: UUID!) {
  createJournal(
    input: {
      journalId: $journalGLId
      name: "GL"
      description: "General Ledger"
      status: ACTIVE
    }
  ) {
    journalId
    name
    description
    status
  }
}

This will return the ID, name, description, and status of the newly created journal. Customize the input to suit your needs.

Modify an existing journal

To modify an existing journal, you can use the updateJournal mutation. Let's update the description of the newly created journal:

Copymutation UpdateJournal($journalGLId: UUID!) {
  updateJournal(
    id: $journalGLId
    input: { description: "_The_ ledger. The only one." }
  ) {
    journalId
    description
    history(first: 2) {
      nodes {
        version
        description
      }
    }
  }
}

The response includes the UUID and the updated description of the journal, as well as the history of the changes made to the journal.

Query a journal

To query a journal, you can use the journal query and provide the ID to fetch.

Copyquery GetJournal($journalGLId: UUID!) {
  journal(id: $journalGLId) {
    name
    description
    status
    version
  }
}

This will return the name, description, status, and version of the journal.

Lock a journal to prevent posting

Like other resources in Twisp, "deleting" a journal does not actually remove it from the database, but instead prevents it from being used by setting its status to LOCKED.

To lock a journal to prevent posting, you can use the deleteJournal mutation. Let's lock our General Ledger journal:

Copymutation DeleteJournal($journalGLId: UUID!) {
  deleteJournal(id: $journalGLId) {
    journalId
    status
  }
}

Conclusion

Journals are a fundamental component of accounting, used to store collections of transactions. In this tutorial, we covered how to create a new journal, modify an existing one, query a journal, and lock a journal. These basic operations can be used to manage journals effectively and efficiently in your multi-journal accounting workflow.