Is there a way to make Journal Entries (or a workaround to have the same effect)?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/26/2015 8:30 PM, Alice Lee wrote:
> Your accountant can make the entries directly into the general ledger,
> dating them the last day of whatever period he is working with.  Then make
> an account report and send that to you.  You can make those entries into
> your program.
This is one of those cases where understanding what guncash is doing and 
also how old fashioned pen and ink on paper bookkeeping was done would 
be of great help.

original method:  Transactions were first entered into a "journal" which 
was a record of transactions in date order. Each would have a debit 
account (or accounts) and a credit account (or accounts) and a 
description.The net of each transaction being of course zero (total 
debits = total credits).  These were then "posted" into the ledger 
accounts with that operation checked off to indicate done (the "posted" 
column). The manual process subject to transcription errors and there 
were all sorts of tricks to find the offending item but still tedious.

gnucash method:  Autoposting in reverse. You enter the transaction 
directly in the ledger from any of the affected ledger accounts. The 
journal entry is never done and exists on in implicit form (there is a 
report you can request which is equivalent to a display of the journal 
that would have resulted in the ledger). No chance of a transcription 
error in posting as the computer will always do this correctly.

a) Tell your accountant that is what gnucash is doing.
b) Tell your accountant that it doesn't matter that gnucash doesn't have 
an explicit journal. That she can just give you the "journal 
transactions" for the transactions that would correct your books and you 
will then enter those into gnucash doing that the gnucash way (entering 
the transaction directly into the ledger from any of the affected ledger 
accounts and that WOULD enter the transaction into the implicit journal. 
The computer can check that what is entered is in balance.
c) The reason for the confusion on the part of your accountant is that 
she pictures gnucash to be working in the reverse direction, in the same 
direction as old fashioned bookkeeping would have done it. Computerized 
with the "journal" real and the "ledger" implicit.
d) One of the shortcuts in traditional bookkeeping was to recognize that 
90+% of the transactions tended to affect just a few of the ledger 
accounts (cash being one of these). So there would be a subset of the 
ledger, usually on wide, multi-column paper known as the "cashbook" and 
if the transaction affected JUST a ledger account within this subset it 
was entered directly here with no explicit journal entry. Only 
transactions affecting an account outside this subset were entered into 
the journal and posted normally. It is THAT journal that your accountant 
is asking for. Doesn't exist because isn't needed by the gnucash way. 
Gnucash CAN have this "enter everything directly into the ledger" 
because it is easy for the computer to produce the equivalent journal 
entries on demand.

Michael D Novack

PS: After you have entered the correction transactions (and this is the 
proper way, NOT by changing existing entries) you will be able to 
produce the journal report for these to show to your accountant.