A journal entry is the most basic transaction in our accounting system. Whenever you work with account registers, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and others, a journal entry is created under the hood.

Sometimes you may need to create a journal entry yourself to capture a transaction that cannot be entered any other way. Journal entries form the building blocks of the double-entry accounting method. They make it possible to track what an organization has used its resources for, and where those resources came from. The double-entry accounting method requires every transaction to be recorded in at least two accounts.

Important: only add a journal entry if you know what you are doing. The system only enforces that the journal entry is in balance when saving. Since you can choose any account in the system and have full control over what is debited and credited, adding a journal entry without fully understanding how credits and debits affect account balances may lead to unintended results.

To enter a journal entry, go to Accounting > Entry > Journal Entries from the left-hand menu. From here, click on the "Add Journal Entry" button to add a new entry or click on the Entry # in the table to edit an existing one.

A pop up will appear with the following fields:

Date

Required. The date of the transaction.

Memo

Required. A brief description detailing what this journal entry is for.

Line Items

This section lets you indicate the amounts and affected accounts. The debits and credits must balance each other. The funds selected must also balance each other. As long as the line items are out of balance, the system will not let you save the journal entry. If anything is out of balance, you will see a message underneath the line items indicating which column is out of balance (debits or credits) as well as any funds that are out of balance (if any).

Click on the "add lines" button to add more lines. Click on the trash icon at the end of a row to delete that row.

Tip: Debits and credits affect account balances differently depending on the type of account it is. You can open a cheatsheet by clicking on "show cheatsheet" right under the Entry # in the pop up. Here is a copy of the cheatsheet that appears:

Files

If you need to store any files with this journal entry, you can upload them in this section.

Once you are done filling out the required fields, click on the "Save" button to add the journal entry to the general ledger.