Don't let journal entries post unchecked. Route every entry through a mandatory review so a second pair of eyes confirms each debit and credit before the ledger updates — and every decision is on permanent record.
Start Free TrialWhen a bookkeeper or staff accountant can both create and post a journal entry in the same step, no control sits between input and output. Mistakes go undetected until month-end review — or worse, until an auditor finds them. Intentional errors slip through just as easily. For any business with more than one person touching the books, that's an unacceptable level of exposure.
Kantivo solves it by separating the act of creating an entry from the act of posting it. Entries start as drafts, get submitted for review, and only post after an authorized approver signs off. The result is a built-in second look on every entry that touches your account balances, general ledger, and financial statements.
The controls in this workflow line up with the segregation-of-duties principles in GAAP guidance, the COSO internal control framework, and the audit documentation expected in both review and audit engagements. For companies subject to SOX Section 404, the journal entry approval audit trail directly supports management's assessment of internal controls over financial reporting.
Staff enter the journal entry and save it as a draft. The accounts aren't yet affected — the entry exists in the system but is clearly marked as unposted.
The preparer adds a note and submits the entry. It lands immediately in the approver's queue and triggers a notification.
The designated reviewer examines each line, checks the account coding, and either approves the entry or returns it with written feedback.
Approved entries post and flow into account balances, the general ledger, and every financial report. Rejected entries return to draft for correction.
Each journal entry carries a status that tells the team exactly where it sits in the process at any moment.
Approvers get a dedicated queue showing every entry awaiting their decision. No digging through the full transaction list to find pending items.
A rejection is only useful when the preparer knows what to fix. Kantivo requires a comment on every rejection, so corrections happen without back-and-forth.
Every company has different team structures and risk tolerances. Configure the approval rules to fit your organization exactly.
Every status change — submitted, approved, rejected, resubmitted, posted — is recorded with the user's name, the timestamp, and any comment provided. These records are write-once and can't be edited or deleted. When your auditor requests a listing of journal entries with preparer and reviewer identification, you generate it from Kantivo in seconds rather than reconstructing it from old email threads.
Accounting firms get equal value on the client side. Partners can review staff-prepared entries across multiple client companies from a single queue. Each approval documents the partner's review in the client's permanent records — satisfying peer review requirements and producing the quality control documentation that review standards require.
The approval workflow's biggest payoff isn't fraud prevention — though it does make fraud meaningfully harder. The bigger benefit is catching ordinary mistakes before they cascade. A transposed account number, a sign error on a credit memo, an allocation to the wrong department — these are easy to make and costly to unwind once posted. A reviewer looking at the entry fresh catches things the preparer glossed over. That second-look discipline is exactly what the approval workflow institutionalizes in your accounting process.
That's controlled in company settings. You can require approval on all entries from certain roles (such as bookkeepers) while letting accountants or managers post directly. If your company is small and the owner enters everything, approval can be off entirely. The feature scales with your team.
Once posted, a journal entry follows the standard rules for posted transactions in Kantivo — corrections require a reversing entry rather than direct editing. The original entry and its approval record stay intact in the audit trail. Admins can create reversing entries when corrections are needed, and those reversals go through the approval process like any other entry.
Kantivo admins have the ability to override the approval requirement and post directly when circumstances demand it. Every override is logged in the audit trail with the admin's name and timestamp, so nothing bypasses documentation even in urgent situations. You stay flexible while the record stays complete.
Auditors testing journal entries typically request the complete list of entries posted during the period, the preparer's name on each one, evidence that a second person reviewed each one, and any written authorization. Kantivo produces all of this in a single report exportable to CSV or PDF. The approval comments serve as the written authorization documentation auditors require under AU-C Section 240.
Yes. Each company in Kantivo has its own approval settings and its own approval queue. Users with access to multiple companies see each company's queue separately. For accounting firms with many clients, approvers can move through client entries without queues from different companies blending together.
Try Kantivo free for 30 days. Enable journal entry approval for your team in minutes and start building the documentation trail auditors and regulators expect.