What is a Journal?

Slide notes: What is a Journal? A Journal is a Transaction event in the Financial and Accounting system, with at least 1 Debit and 1 Credit of the General Ledger. Of course, a Journal can also have multiple Debits and Credits.

Slide 2

Slide notes: Journal Transactions are the events that are tracked in an Accounting System and that ultimately determine the balances of the various Accounts. In this example, we are looking at a Transaction that has been drilled from a Ledger Account. In this case, the Journal has only 1 debit and 1 credit, and we can see that the 1st account is debited with an amount of 10 while the next account is credited with an amount of 10. The amounts will always add up to zero, because the debits and credits on a Journal must always balance to zero.

Slide 3

Slide notes: In the next example, we see a Journal with multiple legs, i.e. multiple Transactions. In this case, there are 3 Transactions, therefore 3 debits and 3 credits. The Accounting View presents the effect of the Journal in the Accounting system.

Slide 4

Slide notes: And here we see a short example of an Audit Trail, which is a Report type that is always available for all Account types. An Audit Trail will always report on the various Journals that have been posted on the Account that is currently listed in the Audit Trail.