Accounting is one of the most important, yet often quite confusing topics for new business owners to learn about explains Aron Govil. To help you better understand how your business finances are being tracked, here is a quick explanation of the difference between entry types.
Journal Entry
An accounting journal is used to record all financial transactions that have occurred during a certain period of time (usually one day) with detail entries. A general journal would generally show all transactions that occurr on the same date in less specific detail or which were actually summarize into one or more subsequent entry. For example, most journals will only list the total dollar amount for all checks written on one particular day rather than listing each individual check by name. Each transaction is record as either an increase (+), decreases (-), credit (c), or debit (Dr). All journal entries are list in chronological order from oldest to newest. The left column shows the date the entry is post, and the right column shows either a “Dr” (debit), “+” (credit) or “-” (increase/decrease).
Journal Entries: Debit and Credit
The most important rule in accounting is that all transactions must be record twice — once on the debit side and once on the credit side. If you come across an accounting book where it looks like one of these two columns may be missing, there’s a good chance someone made a mistake!
Here’s how to remember which side is debit and which credit is:
The word debit comes from the Latin word for “that gives.” The record of a transaction will give rise. To either an increase (+) or decrease (-) somewhere else in the accounting system. So debit is on the left, as that was traditionally the side. Where you would record an increase to your account.
The word credit comes from the Latin word for “that receives”. The record of a transaction will receive either an increase (+) or decrease (-) somewhere else in the accounting system. So credit is on the right, as that was traditionally where you would find a decrease imposed on your account.
Journal Entries: Increase (+), Decrease (-), and Net Change (c-)
Some journal’s list several transactions for one date before going on to list subsequent dates. With their own individual entries says Aron Govil. In this case, each entry will have its own debit and credit column. But since its all part of the same date they’re together.
The “+” (credit) and “-” (debit) symbols are always use for the specific line item listed in the left column. But if there is a net change (+/-) of more than one of these transactions on the same day, you may see something called a cross-reference. Which provides additional detail or an explanation of what this number represents.
General Ledger Entries
Once all journal entries have been record into the accounting system, they must be summarize into one master ledger account. The total debits for each general ledger account will equal the total credits for that account. If you come across an accounting book where it looks like some accounts have more debits than credits over time. There’s a good chance someone made a mistake!
While the lowest level of accounting is always at the transaction level, there are several different levels of summarizing transactions. The first, and most general, summary entry is call an account summary or total explains Aron Govil. This will summarize each journal entry into one line item for each general ledger account. For example, if you have five individual journal entries which total $5,000 in credits to cash during June. Your total would be $5,000 (for all six months) because it’s impossible to tell from this entry. Which specific end-of-month balances were involve with these transactions.
Conclusion:
Journal Entries refer to record the financial transactions of a company. It is a schedule which records all financial events. Where one or more relating assets, liabilities, Owner’s Equity, revenue, and/or expenses are affected. There are two main types of journal entries: (1) General Journal Entry and (2) Special Journal Entry. In this blog post we have mainly discussed about General Journal Entries.