Accounting Module
Journals & the General Ledger
Where every double-entry journal in your books lives — typed by hand or posted automatically by another module — and where the Trial Balance, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, and Statement of Equity are all built from that same real, posted source.
Start here
1Before you start
A journal entry can only reference real, postable accounts from your Chart of Accounts — so the Accounts module needs at least a few postable accounts before you can build a balanced entry here. If you’re using the starter chart every company gets seeded with automatically, that’s already true from day one.
You can create a manual journal entry in any accounting mode. But most of what shows up here isn’t typed by hand at all — Banking, Sales, Purchases, and Payroll all post their own real journal entries automatically the moment your company’s accounting mode is set to double-entry in Settings. A Simple (cash-basis) company skips journal posting from those modules entirely; this page is still available, but mostly empty unless you post manual entries yourself.
Create & post
2Create a journal entry
Click + New Journal Entry. It starts as a Draft — fully editable until you post it.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Journal No. | Auto-generated as JRN-YYYY-#### if left blank. |
| Entry Date | Defaults to today. Determines which posting period this entry falls into. |
| Reference | Optional free text — an invoice number, check number, or similar. |
| Memo | Optional description of the entry. |
| Lines | Each line is one Account plus either a Debit or a Credit amount. |
3Post it
Click Post. A few things are checked before it’s allowed:
- At least one line.
- Each line has either a debit or a credit greater than zero — never both, never neither.
- Total debits equal total credits, and the total is greater than zero.
- The entry’s own posting period (its month) isn’t closed — see Close a posting period.
Once posted, the entry becomes a permanent record: it moves every account balance it touches, feeds the Ledger and every financial statement, and can no longer be edited or deleted. Only a Draft journal can still be changed or removed — to correct a posted one, reverse it instead (see Reverse a mistake).
Manage the books
4Close a posting period
Toggle any calendar month (YYYY-MM) between Open and Closed. Once a period is closed, nothing — manual or automatic — can post a new journal entry dated inside it; the attempt is rejected with the period named directly, so you know exactly which month to reopen or which date to change.
5Reverse a mistake
Only a Posted journal can be reversed. Reversing never edits or deletes the original — it books a brand-new entry with every debit and credit flipped, dated today, and marks the original Reversed. Both entries stay on record permanently, so the audit trail always shows exactly what happened and when it was corrected.
6Read the reports
The Ledger, Trial Balance, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement, and Statement of Equity are all computed from this exact same set of posted (and reversed) journal entries — never a separate copy — so they always agree with each other. See Financial statements for what each one actually shows.
Common tasks
Where automatic journals come from
Seeing a journal entry in the list you never created yourself? Every journal carries a Source tag showing where it came from — manual for anything typed directly here, or the module that generated it automatically: banking, sales, purchases, or payroll. These post the exact same validation (balanced lines, open period) as a manual entry — nothing programmatic gets a shortcut.
Reopening a closed period
Closing a period is fully reversible — toggle it back to Open the same way you closed it, from Close a posting period. Nothing about the entries already posted inside it changes; reopening only allows new entries to post into that month again.
Reference
Journal statuses
A Draft can be edited or deleted freely. Posted and Reversed are both permanent — the only way to change what a posted entry did is to reverse it, never to edit or delete it directly.
Financial statements
| Statement | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Trial Balance | Every account’s real-time balance, split into its debit or credit column. |
| Profit & Loss | Income minus expenses, summed from posted activity over a date range. |
| Balance Sheet | Assets, liabilities, and equity as of a date. Unclosed profit for the current period appears as its own labeled “Current Period Earnings” line under Equity, so the statement still balances exactly. |
| Cash Flow Statement | Indirect method — net income plus the period’s change in every non-cash balance-sheet account, classified into Operating, Investing, and Financing. Mathematically guaranteed to reconcile to the real change in your cash accounts, shown as a pass/fail reconciles check. |
| Statement of Equity | Each equity account’s opening balance, this period’s movements, and its closing balance — plus a synthetic Retained Earnings row combining prior unclosed earnings with the current period’s net income. |
What this module doesn’t do
The Balance Sheet’s “Current Period Earnings” and the Statement of Equity’s “Retained Earnings” rows are both live, recomputed display lines, not an actual closing journal entry booked into a real account. There’s no “close the year” action that converts one into the other.
A journal line posts in whatever currency its account is already denominated in — there’s no foreign-exchange conversion applied at entry time.
The Cash Flow Statement is built from balance-sheet deltas (the indirect method), not from a literal list of every individual cash movement — though its total is guaranteed to reconcile to your real cash-account balances.