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General Ledger (Ledger)

The VMX Ledger is a full double-entry general ledger built right into the POS. Instead of exporting daily totals to outside accounting software, stores that use the Ledger keep their books — chart of accounts, journal entries, bills, checks, deposits, and financial statements — inside VMX itself.

Availability

The Ledger is enabled per-client by VMX — most stores use QuickBooks instead and will not see a Ledger tab in Admin. If you'd like to discuss using the VMX Ledger, contact help@vmxllc.com.

Within a store that has the Ledger enabled, each user also needs the GL admin permission (managed on the Admin → Permissions page) to see the Ledger tab. VMX can also set up individual users (an outside accountant, for example) with read-only access — they can view accounts and run reports but cannot save changes.

Open the Ledger

  1. Open Admin and click Ledger in the top navigation.
  2. The Ledger opens to the Pay Bills page (or the Chart of Accounts, if your access doesn't include bill paying).
  3. Click the arrow handle on the left edge of the page to slide out the Ledger menu.

The slide-out menu contains a Search box, a + New button, and four groups. The groups run in the order you're likely to need them — daily work at the top, things you set up once at the bottom:

A/P Aging is a report, but it sits under Bills & Vendors because the question it answers — who do we owe, and how late are we — is one you ask while paying bills, not while closing the month. - Setup — Chart of Accounts, Payment Terms, Recurring, and Budgets

You'll only see the groups your access allows. A group with nothing in it for you doesn't appear at all.

Second views, on the same row

Some rows carry a small link on the right — Detail next to P&L, A/P Aging and Balances, and 1099 next to Payments. These open a different view of the same information, so the two live together instead of taking a row each.

Counts

A few rows show a number, and the way it looks tells you how much it wants from you:

  • Amber — something is late. Bills past their due date, or an account you've reconciled before that's now missed a month.
  • Grey — work is waiting, which is normal. Bank feed lines you haven't matched yet.
  • Plain grey text, no circle — just how many exist. Recurring templates, for instance. It never means anything is wrong.

Folding groups away

Click a group's heading to fold it. Your choice is remembered on that computer, so a group you never use stays out of the way. Everything starts open, and a folded group opens itself if you're on a page inside it.

All Ledger reports are kept on the accrual basis (each report footer shows "Accrual basis" and the time it was generated), and every page is formatted for printing — use your browser's print function to produce a clean paper copy.

The Vendors list

Admin → Ledger → Bills & Vendors → Vendors lists your vendors with their terms, account number, 1099 flag, open balance, and the date you last had any transaction with them.

Vendors you haven't dealt with in two years are hidden. Tick Include vendors with no activity in 2 years to see them.

That's because the Active checkbox on a vendor record is rarely unticked once a supplier stops trading with you — one store had 1,030 vendors marked active, of which 29 had any transaction in the past year. What you last bought from someone is a better guide to whether you still deal with them than a flag nobody maintains.

A vendor with money outstanding always shows, however long it's been. Money owed is exactly what this screen is for, so the two-year rule never hides a balance.

Use the A/P only / Inventory / All tabs to narrow by type, and click any column heading to sort.

The list is paged, 25 at a time by default — change it with the box under the table, or choose All. Paging, sorting and searching all happen on the server, so the search box under a column heading searches every vendor, not just the ones on screen. Type part of a name, code, terms or account number; each word has to match, so "bart green" finds Barton's Greenhouse.

Create a Ledger transaction (Check, Journal Entry, Expense, Deposit, Bill, Transfer)

In the Ledger's slide-out menu, click + New and choose the type of transaction to create:

  • Check — a payment written from a bank account
  • Journal Entry — a manual entry with debit and credit lines you control
  • Expense — money spent from a bank or credit card account
  • Deposit — money added to a bank account, sometimes built from your store's Undeposited Funds (see Deposits & Undeposited Funds)
  • Bill — an amount owed to a vendor (accounts payable), paid later through Pay Bills

Every transaction has a Date and a Memo. Depending on the type you'll also see:

  • Vendor — on Expenses, Bills, Checks, and Payments
  • Bank/credit account — the account the money moves through, on Expenses, Deposits, Checks, and Payments (Journal Entries and Bills don't have this field)
  • Check no. and Payee / Address — on Checks and Payments
  • Due Date, Discount $, Bill No., and Balance Due — on Bills (Bill No. is required; a Make Payment button appears on bills with a balance due)
  • Journal no. — on Journal Entries (optional). No two entries can have the same journal number unless one of them is voided; saving a duplicate shows which entry already uses it.

Below the header, add detail lines. Each line has an Account dropdown, an amount, and an optional description. Inactive accounts are hidden from the dropdowns.

  1. Fill in the header fields and lines. Click Add Lines if you need more rows.
  2. Click Save (or Save & New to save and immediately start another transaction of the same type).

For a Journal Entry, the debit and credit totals at the bottom of the lines must be equal before the entry makes sense — a green check icon appears next to the totals when the entry balances, and a "no entry" icon when it doesn't. Small arrows next to each amount show whether a debit or credit increases that account, based on its type (debits increase assets and expenses; credits increase liabilities, equity, and income).

Existing transactions can be reopened from any report by clicking their number. On an existing transaction you'll also find Copy (duplicate it), Delete, Revert Changes, a Print Check button on checks, an Attachments section for scanned invoices or receipts attached to the transaction, and a History section showing every change ever made to it (see the Audit Log section of Financial Statements & GL Reports).

Search the Ledger

Type into the Search box at the top of the Ledger's slide-out menu and press Enter. Search matches transactions by:

  • Transaction number or PO number
  • Date (type a date like 9/15/2025)
  • Memo text
  • Vendor name or vendor code
  • Invoice number (Ref No.), check number, or journal number
  • Dollar amount — bill amounts, and individual debit or credit line amounts

Results list the ID, Date, Type, Amount, Memo, Vendor, Ref No., PO#, and Check# of each match; click an ID to open the transaction. For a Journal Entry, Ref No. shows its journal number. In the account registers and the journal report, the Num column shows a bill's number, a check's number, or a journal entry's journal number, and the transaction ID when there is none.

The Accounting Dashboard

Opening the Ledger lands on the Accounting Dashboard. At the top, a row of cards shows each bank and credit-card account's current book balance (credit cards show the amount owed), with a note when that account has bank-feed lines waiting for review — click a card to open the account's register. Below the cards, the dashboard lists only problems: bills past due, discounts about to expire, checks that never cleared, feeds falling behind, integrity checks that stopped tying out. Each tile links to the screen that fixes it. A healthy book shows a green all-clear — an empty dashboard is the goal.

Close the books (lock a period)

Once a period is finalized, you can lock it so no one accidentally changes history. Set the Books Closed Before date on the Admin → Configuration page. After that, any attempt to add, edit, or delete a Ledger transaction dated before that date is rejected with:

The books are closed prior to [date], so transactions with dates before that date may not be added, edited or deleted.

To make a correction in a closed period, clear or move the Books Closed Before date, make the fix, and set the date back.

How the Ledger fits together

For stores set up with the daily sales journal, VMX posts register activity into the Ledger automatically as journal entries, so the books reflect POS activity without re-keying. That posting is configured by VMX as part of Ledger setup — contact help@vmxllc.com with questions about what posts automatically for your store.

Each day's entry carries a journal number made from the store and date (for example VMX IPS 9/15/2026), so a day can only be posted once per store. If Add JE for Day is pressed for a day that's already in the Ledger, nothing is posted and VMX tells you which entry already has that day. To rebuild a day, void its entry first (see below), then post it again.

Move money between accounts (Transfer)

+ New > Transfer records money moving between two of your own bank or credit-card accounts — funding the payroll account, paying the store card from checking, moving cash to savings. Pick the From account, the To account, and the amount; VMX writes the two balanced ledger lines for you. Reopening a transfer shows the same simple From/To/Amount view.

Void a transaction (instead of deleting it)

Open any posted transaction and use Void. Voiding sets every line to zero and marks the memo VOID, but keeps the transaction on the books — it still appears in registers and the Journal, with its full original amounts preserved in the audit history. Use void when the paper trail matters: a spoiled check, a duplicate entry the accountant should still be able to see.

  • A voided bill payment gives the paid amount back to its bills.
  • A voided bill owes nothing and leaves Pay Bills and A/P Aging.
  • A transaction with a reconciled line refuses to void — undo the reconciliation first, or the bank statement it tied to would stop matching.
  • A voided transaction cannot be edited. Delete removes it entirely, audit trail and all — prefer void.