General Ledger Issue: Unable to clear transaction once transacttion is "entered"

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>
>For instance, entering a regular "Monthly Bank Service Charge: would
>involved 
>	1) crediting the "Assets: Current Assets:Checking Account", and
>	2) debiting the "Expenses: Bank Service Charge" account by the same amount. 
>	3) "clicking" the Enter button,
>	4) At this point, in the past, the transaction would be "cleared" from the
>general ledger and all required accounts are updated as required.
>	
>Now, with this new issue, all required accounts are updated as required, but
>the transaction is NOT cleared from the general ledger. Just to be clear and
>avoid any language issues, by clearing the General ledger, I mean "not being
>visible in the ledger. Of course, the transaction still appears in the
>General Journal as expected.
>
Sorry, clear as mud.

WHY would you expect or want a transaction (a REAL transaction) to 
disappear like that? Just because there isn't a check number associated 
with this draw on the account? There isn't a check number associated 
with deposits either. Or interest on the account if interest paying.

Perhaps there is confusion about what the General Ledger report IS (or 
the General Journal report for that matter). If we compare to the old 
fashioned days .......

a) The General Journal report would be a printout of the Journal, that 
is, a chronological ordering of all transactions within the specified 
time interval. In the old days this was the book of original entry later 
"posted" to the ledger accounts.

b) The General Ledger has no real equivalent to the old days except 
denoting "not including subsidiary ledger books kept in separate 
volumes). Here is a printout of all of the ledger accounts, transactions 
within each account in chronological order. Think of the ledger pages 
(sets of pages) representing each ledger account in the ledger volume of 
old fashioned bookkeeping.

As other people have been mentioning, watch out for a time interval 
being specified other than what you wanted/expected. When something 
shows up that you didn't expect or doesn't show up when expected 
(re)CHECK THE DATES.

Michael

Michael