"Crouching credit hidden debit."

This was the slogan on one of the T-shirts at a sportsday a few years ago when I was still at PwC. I had such a lekker laugh and until today it has stuck with me. Although I laugh at this I have often felt that debits and credits hide away from me.

As auditors we find our zen in zero, right? If the debits and credits do not balance to zero we feel that we cannot even start. Finding the corresponding debits and credits of each transaction is often extremely complicated.

ERP system batch entries and post a single gross or VAT transaction as corresponding entry to balance the transaction.

In Pastel Partner and Xpress for instance these batched entries are referenced as ZCONTRAS. I am so happy that I no longer have this problem now that I use a BI tool when I audit and review financials.

I can view transactions holistically or individually and filter by unique transaction ID. Transaction ID is not the same as transaction "Refrence" as in a normal Pastel GL export. A transaction ID is a unique database code allocated to each transaction.

So now it is easy to find my zen.... How do you find corresponding entries?