Control Accounts (AR & AP)
A control account is a general ledger account that holds a running total of pending items — cleared as those items are applied, recognised, or settled — with the detail kept in a subledger or schedule behind it. Your Accounts Receivable control account, for example, shows one number on the balance sheet (the total your customers owe), while the AR subledger holds the invoice-by-invoice, customer-by-customer detail that adds up to it. A control account and its detail should always agree.
By design, control accounts are driven by their subledger: REDA posts to them automatically as you record the documents you actually work with — invoices, bills, receipts, and payments. Best practice is to let the subledger do that work so the control account stays reconciled to its detail. The Control Account flag itself is a reporting and classification marker — it tells REDA which accounts are subledger-driven, for financial-statement grouping and AR/AP exposure reporting. This article explains how they work and how to keep them tied out.
Access you'll need. Designating or changing a control account requires the Accounting Admin v2 or Accounting Controller v2 permission set. The Accounts Payable v2, Accounts Receivable v2, and Read Only v2 sets can view accounts but not change them.
Why control accounts exist
The general ledger is meant to be a summary. You don’t want thousands of individual customer balances cluttering it — you want one Accounts Receivable line, backed by a subledger you can drill into. The control account is the bridge between the two:
- The GL shows the total. One AR figure, one AP figure — clean financial statements.
- The subledger shows the detail. Which customer, which invoice, how overdue — the working detail your team needs.
- They reconcile. The control account balance should always equal the sum of the open items in its subledger — if the two ever diverge, it’s a signal something needs investigating.
The AR and AP control accounts
The two control accounts every organisation uses are receivables and payables. REDA posts to them automatically, from the accounting defaults each entity inherits:
| Control account | Posted by the subledger when… |
|---|---|
| Accounts Receivable an asset |
Debited when you post a sales invoice (the customer now owes you) and credited when you apply a cash receipt (they’ve paid). The balance is what your customers owe right now. |
| Accounts Payable a liability |
Credited when you post a purchase invoice (you now owe the vendor) and debited when you post a cash disbursement (you’ve paid). The balance is what you owe your vendors right now. |
In day-to-day work you don’t type these postings yourself — you record an invoice or a payment, and REDA moves the control account behind the scenes, keeping it in step with the subledger. You can post a manual journal entry to a control account when you genuinely need to (an opening balance, a reclassification, an audit adjustment) — see below for when that’s appropriate.
Best practice: let the subledger drive them
Posting a manual journal entry straight into a control account can break the tie-out between the GL and its subledger — the GL would say one thing and the invoice detail another, so the two would no longer reconcile. REDA permits manual entries (you may genuinely need one — an opening balance at go-live, a reclassification, an audit adjustment), but they are yours to make deliberately and to reconcile afterward.
How REDA keeps them tied out
Every receivable and payable posting the engine makes flows through the control account, so its balance tracks the open subledger. REDA also stamps a control-account marker onto each posting, so reports can total your AR and AP exposure directly — the basis for the AR aging, AP aging, and balance reports — without re-deriving it from the subledger.
Designating a control account
Your seeded chart already has AR and AP marked as control accounts, and the accounting defaults already point at them — so in most cases there is nothing to set up. If you do create your own (for example, a control account for a custom subledger), mark it by ticking Control Account on the GL account. Two rules apply:
- A control account can’t also be Tax Related. Control accounts are driven by their subledger; tax accounts are driven by the tax engine. An account is one or the other, never both.
- An inactive account can’t be a control account. Reactivate it first, or remove the control designation — a control account has to be live to do its job.
Where to go next
- Understanding GL Accounts — the account record control accounts extend.
- GL Account Types & Sub-Types — how AR & AP are classified.
- Creating & Managing GL Accounts — set up a control account.
- Chart of Accounts Setup Best Practices — place control accounts well.
- Customer Account Ledger — the AR subledger behind the control.
Frequently asked questions
Yes — REDA permits it, for cases like opening balances at go-live, reclassifications, or audit adjustments. For routine changes to a customer or vendor balance, prefer the subledger (a credit memo, receipt, or invoice void) so the control account and its detail stay aligned. After any manual entry to a control account, reconcile the account to its subledger.
Drill into the subledger — the open sales invoices behind AR, or open purchase invoices behind AP. The control account balance is their live total, and the aging reports break it down by customer/vendor and age.
From the accounting defaults. Each entity inherits its AR and AP control accounts from the global (or territory) defaults when it’s created, so posting always knows which accounts to use.
You can change the flag — just remember it governs classification and reporting, not posting. A control account is grouped and totalled as AR/AP exposure in your statements and reports, so un-flagging an account that’s actively used as AR or AP would drop it from that treatment. Leave it set for accounts in active use. (The flag doesn’t change whether you can post to the account — that’s always permitted.)
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