Forty manual entries, one example month.
Current answers to this question give a number. One control matrix sends manual entries over 100,000 dollars to the controller; another example uses 50,000. Both are reasonable. Neither shows what a given threshold sends for approval in a month of entries, or what it leaves out.
So here is an example month for one company with four people who post journals: a staff accountant, a senior accountant, the controller and the CFO. The entries and amounts are examples, in US dollars, and the amount of each entry is its total debits.
| Entry type | Posted by | Entries | Amounts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accruals | Staff accountant | 12 | 1,850 to 88,000 |
| Reclassifications | Senior accountant | 10 | 450 to 64,000 |
| Corrections | Senior accountant | 6 | 120 to 31,000 |
| Allocations | Staff accountant | 6 | 4,000 to 52,000 |
| Estimates and reserves | Controller | 4 | 3,000, 7,500, 9,800 and 140,000 |
| Estimates and reserves | CFO | 2 | 6,500 and 9,900 |
| Total | 40 | 685,260 |
What each threshold sends for approval.
The value sits in a few large entries, as it does in most ledgers. The count sits in many small ones. A threshold trades one against the other.
| Approve when | Entries | Share of entries | Value | Share of value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Every entry | 40 | 100.0% | 685,260 | 100.0% |
| 5,000 or more | 25 | 62.5% | 650,750 | 95.0% |
| 10,000 or more | 14 | 35.0% | 562,600 | 82.1% |
| 25,000 or more | 8 | 20.0% | 469,500 | 68.5% |
| 50,000 or more | 4 | 10.0% | 344,000 | 50.2% |
| 100,000 or more | 1 | 2.5% | 140,000 | 20.4% |
At 10,000 dollars, 14 entries go for approval, fewer than one per working day, and they carry 82.1 percent of the value. That looks like a good trade until you list the 26 entries that post on their own.
| Entry | Posted by | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Bad debt reserve top up | Controller | 3,000 |
| Legal accrual | CFO | 6,500 |
| Warranty reserve | Controller | 7,500 |
| Inventory reserve release | Controller | 9,800 |
| Reserve release | CFO | 9,900 |
| Total | 36,700 |
Five of the six estimates in the month post without a second person seeing them. They are small, and they are also the entries with the most judgement in them, posted by the two people with the most authority over the numbers. PCAOB AS 2201 paragraph .14 lists controls over journal entries and adjustments in the period-end process among the controls that address the risk of management override. A threshold does not reach these entries at all.
The sixth estimate is the controller’s 140,000 dollar bonus true-up. It crosses the threshold, so it goes for approval, to the controller. A system that blocks self-approval will hold it there. One that does not will let the controller approve their own largest entry of the month.
Three rules, in this order.
The fix is two rules on who posted the entry, placed ahead of the amount rule. Where the approval engine takes the first rule that matches, as Rivane and Rillet both do, the order decides who approves.
| Rule | Matches when | Approver | Entries | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Created by the controller | CFO | 4 | 160,300 |
| 2 | Created by the CFO | Controller | 2 | 16,400 |
| 3 | Amount 10,000 or more | Controller | 13 | 422,600 |
| No rule matched | Reviewed after posting | 21 | 85,960 |
| Design | Approvals a month | Value reviewed before posting | Estimates reviewed by someone else |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approve every entry | 40 | 685,260 (100.0%) | 6 of 6 |
| Amount 10,000 or more | 14 | 562,600 (82.1%) | 1 of 6, routed to the person who posted it |
| Three rules, in order | 19 | 599,300 (87.5%) | 6 of 6 |
Five more approvals a month buys review of every estimate, by someone other than its author. The 21 entries left over total 85,960 dollars, the largest is 9,950, and all of them were posted by the two accountants. Approving all forty would add 21 approvals to the close for 12.5 percent of the value, which is why most teams cover them a different way.
Review the rest after posting, in one sitting.
Entries below the threshold still need a control, and it can come after posting. AS 2201 paragraph .26 includes the procedures used to initiate, authorize, record and process journal entries in the period-end process the auditor must evaluate, so the auditor will ask how the 21 are covered. A monthly review that takes twenty minutes is a good answer.
- Run one listing of every manual entry that posted without approval in the period: preparer, date keyed, accounting date, accounts, amount and description.
- Sort it by amount and look first at the band just under the threshold. In the example that is three entries between 8,900 and 9,950. A run of entries just under the line is the pattern a threshold invites.
- Look for entries to accounts that carry judgement, such as reserves, revenue and equity, whatever their size. A rule on the account is the natural home for this, and until your system offers one, this review is where it lives.
- Sign and date the listing as a whole, and keep it with the period close. The reviewer should be someone who posted none of the entries on it.
What Sage Intacct and NetSuite give you.
Sage Intacct sets approval per journal. Once a journal is configured for it, every submission to that journal needs approval, and the help page says journal approvals are not based on values and value thresholds but on the approvers you configure. It applies to recurring and memorized transactions, templates, CSV imports and web services too. A common way to get a threshold effect is to post routine entries to a journal without approval and judgement entries to one with it.
NetSuite’s SuiteApprovals routes a journal entry for approval when it is above the rule’s Record Amount Limit. With Use Employee Limit checked, an entry is approved automatically when the submitter’s own journal entry limit is higher than the amount. The employee record holds that limit, the person who approves that employee’s entries, and the most they can approve. Check the limits on senior people with care: a high personal limit is exactly how a controller’s estimate posts with no one else looking.
How Rivane routes journal approvals today.
Rivane checks every manual journal against the entity’s approval rules when someone posts it. The three rules above can be written as they are: two on Created by, one on Amount, with the first two above the third in the list.
Rivane journal entry approval rules, as built
# How Rivane gates a manual journal today.
where journal entry approval rules, set
per entity in approval settings
conditions amount, created by, subsidiary or
type, joined by AND or OR
amount total debits in the entity's
functional currency
order the first enabled rule that matches
wins; rules can be reordered
on a match the entry moves from draft to
awaiting approval and does not post
no match the entry posts
the maker can never approve their own entry
approval posts the entry; the request keeps
the approver, the time and the rule
A few details matter when you set it up. A rule with no conditions never fires, so to require approval on every manual entry, use Amount 0 or more. Write each threshold in the entity’s own functional currency; a threshold in another currency is treated as not matching. Rules cannot yet look at the account, so a rule such as “any entry to revenue” belongs in the review after posting for now. More than one approval layer can be saved on a rule, but today the first approval posts the entry, so if your policy needs two signatures above some amount, collect the second one as a review. Entries the system creates from bills and other documents are approved at the source document, and recurring entries copy a template that went through the rules when it was first posted.
Keep the record your auditor will ask for.
- The approval rules as they stood during the period, with their order and who changed them, so the design can be shown for March and not only for today.
- For each approved entry: the preparer, the approver, the rule that sent it for approval, and the time of each step.
- The signed listing of unapproved manual entries for each period, with the reviewer and the date.
- Any entry that was rejected or edited and resubmitted, with the reason.
Start with who posted it, then how much.
Count your own last quarter before you choose a number. Pick a threshold your reviewers can keep up with, put rules for the controller’s and the CFO’s entries above it, and review everything else once a month after posting. In the example that is 19 approvals, every estimate seen by someone else, and one signed listing.
If you want to see these rules set up on your own entities, book a walkthrough with Rivane.
Sources
- PCAOB, AS 2201, An Audit of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting That Is Integrated with An Audit of Financial Statements, paragraphs .14 and .26. Read in the page for controls over journal entries and adjustments made in the period-end financial reporting process, listed among the controls that might address fraud risk and management override, and for the procedures used to initiate, authorize, record and process journal entries as part of the period-end process.
- Sage Intacct Help, Journal entry approval overview. Read in the page for approval being optional, every submission needing approval once a journal is configured for it, approvals not being based on values and value thresholds, and approval also applying to recurring and memorized transactions, templates, CSV imports and web services.
- Oracle NetSuite Help, SuiteApprovals, Automatic Approvals. Read in the page for the Record Amount Limit routing journal entries above the limit for approval, and the Use Employee Limit setting approving an entry automatically when the submitter’s journal entry limit is higher than the amount.
- Oracle NetSuite Help, Setting Employee Approval Information. Read in the page for the Journal Entry Limit, Journal Entry Approver and Journal Entry Approval Limit fields on the employee record.
- Rillet, Journal Entry Approval Workflows, August 2026. Read as a current answer. Its example control matrix sends manual entries over 100,000 dollars to the controller and entries to revenue accounts to a second review.
- Hyperbots, What is Journal Approval Policy? (glossary). Read as a current answer. Its worked example sends manual journals above 50,000 dollars to the accounting manager and the controller.
A note on how this was researched. AS 2201 was read on the PCAOB’s own page. The Sage Intacct and NetSuite behaviour comes from each vendor’s help pages and may differ by release or configuration. The company, the people and the forty entries are examples, and every figure in the tables was computed from them and checked by hand. The Rivane section describes the product as built today, checked against the code rather than marketing copy.
On embedded social posts: we looked for public posts from vendors or practitioners on setting journal approval thresholds and found none we could verify as current, relevant and authentic, so this article uses ordinary citations instead.