General Ledger

Buddha Buck blaisepascal at gmail.com
Fri Feb 23 16:52:17 EST 2018


I suspect that GnuCash terminology regarding journals and ledgers is
somewhat confused and non-standard.

My basic understanding of classical accounting is that transactions were
first entered into journals, and then posted into ledgers, one per account.
The collection of ledger books was the "general ledger", while the nominal
time-ordered collection of journal entries was the "general journal" (or
the "general journal" was the journal in which transactions which didn't
belong in the sales journal, purchase journal, etc were recorded).

In GnuCash terms, a classical account ledger would correspond to a GnuCash
account register. And the classic general journal would correspond to
GnuCash's general ledger. The classic general ledger might even be a
GnuCash book as a whole. I don't know what GnuCash is calling a general
journal.




On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 1:43 PM Adrien Monteleone <
adrien.monteleone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Stan,
>
> No I knew you were referring to the Ledger and I think David did also
> though he linked to the help on the Journal.
>
> Unfortunately, it seems the Help file needs a tweak. (or the software) The
> link he gives describes in fact, the General Ledger. The terminology on the
> title and within the help article are inconsistent with the naming in the
> software. (though Journal is probably the more historically correct term,
> the two might be interchangeable)
>
> In the software, the General Journal is a report you can run that shows
> ALL transactions. (under the Assets & Liabilities sub-menu) You can’t enter
> anything into it. There is no date selector in the options, and the Filter
> By… in View is not available.
>
> Since I don’t close books I see everything when I look at either. Perhaps
> someone who uses that procedure might see only the current accounting
> period - I’m not sure.
>
> To add to the confusion, there is also a General Ledger report located in
> that same menu. However, it seems to be the same as the Transaction Report
> and is much more versatile than the General Journal report.
>
> For the record, I don’t see any separate ‘tool’ or ‘register’ called
> General Journal at least not in my copy of 2.6.19.
>
> Regards,
> Adrien
>
> > On Feb 23, 2018, at 9:42 AM, Stan Brown <the_stan_brown at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks, Adrien.
> >
> > Please note that I asked about the general ledger, not the general
> journal, but I see that the filter works the same way (now that I know to
> try it).
> >
> > As the documentation mentions only the general journal, maybe "and
> general ledger" should be added, for the benefit of folks who are searching
> for it?
> >
> > --
> > Stan Brown
> > the_stan_brown at fastmail.fm
> > http://BrownMath.com
> > http://OakRoadSystems.com/
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 23, 2018, at 7:52 AM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
> >> And unfortunately, this filter change is not sticky. You’ll have to
> >> reset it each time you load the GL. This is already a filed bug.
> >>
> >>> On Feb 23, 2018, at 5:47 AM, David T. via gnucash-user <
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> >>> "The General Journal defaults to showing only the previous month of
> transactions. This is changeable by using the "Filter By..." on the View
> menu."
> >>>
> >>>> On Feb 23, 2018, at 4:27 PM, Stan Brown <the_stan_brown at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> There doesn't seem to be any documentation of Tools » General Ledger,
> >>>> neither in the Help Manual nor in the Concepts Tutorial. (I couldn't
> >>>> find an answer in the FAQ or Using GnuCash either.)
> >>>>
> >>>> I have transactions entered from 2017-12-31 though 2018-01-31. But for
> >>>> some reason, the General Ledger shows only 2018-01-23 through
> >>>> 2018-01-31. ...
> >>>>
> >>>> Please note: I'm talking about the General Ledger _tool_, not the
> >>>> report. I want the ability to correct transactions that I get in the
> tool.
> >
>
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