Correcting or reversing income
Fix a mistaken income entry the safe way — posted ledger entries are never deleted, so a mistake is undone with a reversing entry that keeps the audit trail intact.
Mistakes happen — a donation logged twice, the wrong amount keyed in, or a pledge payment matched to the wrong month. This guide explains how WAQAF lets you put those right, and — just as importantly — what it deliberately does not let you do.
The single most important thing to understand is this: a posted income entry is never deleted, and never edited in place. Once money has been recorded and posted to the ledger, that entry is permanent. A mistake is corrected by adding a reversing entry that cancels it out, leaving both the original and the correction visible. Nothing is ever quietly rewritten or erased, so your books always show exactly what happened and when.
Who can do this. Recording income needs a finance role that grants create — typically the Accountant or Finance Manager. Reversing or correcting a posted entry is a higher bar: it needs a finance role that grants approve — in practice the Finance Manager or the CEO (an organisation Owner or Admin too). An Accountant can record income but cannot reverse it, and an Auditor is read-only. If you can see income but the correction actions are missing, your role doesn't grant approve; see Roles & permissions reference.
Why entries are never deleted
WAQAF is a real-money ledger, so it follows the same rule a paper accounts book does: you don't tear a page out, you write a correcting line. This matters for three reasons:
- The audit trail stays complete. An auditor or your board can always see the original entry, the reversal, and who made each — nothing disappears.
- Balances stay honest. A reversal posts an equal-and-opposite ledger entry, so the fund and category balances return to exactly where they were before the mistake, without anyone touching a balance figure by hand.
- It can't be abused. Because there is no "delete", no one can make money silently vanish from the books.
So when you "reverse" income in WAQAF, behind the scenes it posts a balanced adjustment entry that mirrors the original, and marks the original as Reversed. You'll see the reversed entry stay in the income ledger with a red Reversed status badge — it isn't hidden, it's just clearly marked as cancelled.
What you can change, and when
There is no draft stage for income. The moment you press Record, the entry is posted to the ledger — there is no "save as draft, edit later, then post" step. So the time to catch a typo is on the record form, before you save. Once it's posted, the entry itself can't be edited; you correct it with a reversal.
In practice that gives you two situations:
- Before you save — the income hasn't been posted yet, so just fix the field on the record form and then save. The one guard that may stop you here is the duplicate-reference block: if the reference is already in use, WAQAF refuses to create a second entry and points you at the existing one.
- After you save — the entry is posted and immutable. Opening it from the ledger shows the receipt and a print button, but no edit and no delete. Correcting it means posting a reversal, as described below.
The supported reversal path: recurring-pledge cycles
The one place WAQAF gives you a built-in, self-service reversal today is for recurring-pledge payments — the monthly (or other-cadence) gifts a donor has committed to. When a pledge payment has been recorded against the wrong month, or for the wrong amount, you can undo or correct it from the pledge's cycle timeline.
Where to find it. Donors → Recurring → open the pledge. Each cycle in the timeline that has a payment against it shows two actions, and each missed cycle shows a third.
Open the pledge's cycle timeline
Go to Donors → Recurring and open the pledge you need to fix. The detail page lists every cycle as a timeline: paid cycles, missed cycles, and the upcoming one. A paid cycle shows the donation amount, a link to view it, and — if your role allows — the correction actions.
Unmatch a cycle that shouldn't have been paid
If a payment was matched to a cycle in error, choose Unmatch on that cycle. WAQAF asks you to confirm, then reverses the donation's ledger entry and reopens that month so the cycle is treated as unpaid again. The donation is marked Reversed — it isn't deleted — and the pledge schedule rolls back to that cycle.
Unmatch reverses the underlying ledger entry. This affects your balances and is recorded permanently in the audit trail — it isn't a soft "untag". Only use it when the payment genuinely shouldn't stand against that cycle.
Correct the amount of a cycle
If the right month was paid but the amount was wrong, choose Correct amount on that
cycle. Enter the corrected figure in OMR (to three decimals — for example 25.000) and
confirm. WAQAF reverses the original donation and re-records the same cycle at the corrected
amount, in one atomic step. The old entry stays as Reversed; the new one carries the
right figure.
Attribute existing income to a missed cycle
Sometimes a payment was received and recorded, but never got linked to the pledge cycle it was meant for — so the cycle shows as Missed. On a missed cycle, choose Attribute income, search for the existing posted income by its reference or source, pick it, and confirm. This links that income to the cycle without any reversal (nothing was wrong with the entry — it was simply unmatched). If the income's category differs from the pledge's, WAQAF shows a gentle warning before you confirm, but still lets you proceed.
Closed periods block a reversal. A reversal re-uses the original entry's date, so if that date falls in a closed accounting period, WAQAF stops the reversal and tells you the period is closed. The period has to be reopened before the cycle can be reversed. If you hit this, talk to whoever manages your fiscal periods.
Correcting other income (not a pledge cycle)
For a one-off donation that isn't part of a recurring pledge, there is no self-service reverse button in the income view today — the entry is immutable and the detail screen offers only printing the receipt. The principle is unchanged (a mistake is corrected with a reversing entry, never a delete), but the reversal isn't yet exposed as a button you can press yourself.
If you've posted a one-off income entry in error, do not try to "cancel" it by recording
a negative or offsetting donation yourself — that muddies the ledger and the receipt
numbering. Instead, flag it to your Finance Manager or CEO so the entry can be
reversed properly through the accounting tools. Note the internal receipt number (DON-…)
of the wrong entry so it can be found quickly.
A quick recap
- Posted income is permanent — never deleted, never edited in place.
- Corrections are made with a reversing entry, which keeps the audit trail whole and returns the balances to where they were.
- The before-save fix is just editing the record form; the duplicate-reference guard is the main thing that blocks a re-save.
- The built-in reversal path today is recurring-pledge cycles (Unmatch, Correct amount, Attribute income), and it needs a finance approve role.
- A closed accounting period must be reopened before its entries can be reversed.
See also
Recording income
Enter a single receipt by hand — and catch a typo before you save it.
The income ledger
Find any entry, including ones marked Reversed, and open its detail.
Income receipts
Print or send the bilingual receipt for a recorded donation.
Members & roles
See which finance roles can reverse or correct an entry, and which can only record it.