A general accounting ledger is a collection of your chart of accounts. It is where all of your accounting journal entries end up.
Most all accounting these days is done on computers and the accounting software does the posting to the general ledger in the background.
For example, say you record a check that you wrote to pay your rent in your accounting software.
In the background your accounting software will automatically debit your rent expense account and credit your cash account…posting them to your accounting ledger.
However, it is important as small business owners or even someone just studying accounting to know how and why the accounting software did what it did
As you can see, Jane and Bob have recorded their business transactions for the first month of business. Now it is time to take those accounting journal entries and transfer the debits and credits from the journal entries to the appropriate accounts in the general accounting journal.
This is called posting.
Remember an accounting ledger is a group of accounts from your chart of accounts.
Here is an example of posting some of Jane and Bob’s journal entries that involved cash to the Cash account in their accounting ledger.
|
Date |
Description |
Debit |
Credit |
Balance |
|
March-1 |
Balance forward from Feb-28 |
0 |
|
|
|
3/1 |
|
15000 |
|
|
|
3/5 |
|
|
1700 |
|
|
3/15 |
|
1200 |
|
|
|
3/28 |
|
|
1800 |
|
|
3/30 |
|
500 |
|
|
|
3/31 |
Balance |
13200 |
|
|
The title contains the name of the account and its reference number from your chart of accounts.
· First column is the date. Fill in the date of the transaction.
· Second column is the item. (It is not necessary to write out a description unless you just want to.)
· The third and fourth column is the debit and credit columns.
· The fifth column is the balance column. Some keep a running total, but most draw a line underneath the entries, net all the entries together, and put the balance on the correct side(See explanation at the bottom of this page) of the account.
Summary of example above:
· First line is the balance carries forward from the month before.
· Second line is Jane and Bob’s contribution of $15,000 on March 1st to capitalize their business. (Increased cash – debit)
· On the 5th Jane wrote a check for $1700 for the lease on their store.(Decreased cash – credit)
· On the 15th they had cash sales of $1200. (Increased cash – debit)
· On the 28th Bob paid $1800 to their suppliers for material purchases made earlier in the month on credit. (Decreased cash – credit)
· On the 30th they received $500 from their credit customers customers(Increased cash – debit)
I just used this as an example. In real life you would take each line from the accounting journal entries and transfer the amounts to the corresponding Ledger accounts.
*Notice where I put the balance. It is in the debit column. Each type of account will have a normal balance in either the debit or credit column depending on the category of the account:
· Asset accounts have a debit balance.
· Liabilities have a credit balance.
· Owner’s Equity have a credit balance.
· Incomes have a credit balance.
· Expenses have a debit balance.