General Ledger

[Leo Bolta]

Not to keep the thread alive but these are photos of select pages of the
1882 High School bookkeeping text book, I referred to earlier and promised
to distribute.  Several of the previous commenter's may have been quite
accurate in regards to the historical progression but these pages are just
for those who might be interested on how it was expressed before the turn of
the last century.  Also take note of the penmanship from the personal notes
of the student included in the last attachment...today's penmanship is a
shame by comparison.  My apologies for portions of text which are slightly
blurred. 

Leo 

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces+lbolta=rogers.com at gnucash.org] On Behalf Of
Dale Alspach
Sent: February-26-18 11:21 AM
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: General Ledger

The reference I have distinguishes journal from ledger based on entry time
and purpose. A journal is a historical record of first entry of complete
transactions (splits, notes, etc.). A ledger is a final or secondary record
of changes to an account.

The term general journal seems to have two uses. In a small business every
transaction would be entered in time order in the general journal.
In a larger enterprise there may be many special journals (sales, purchases,
etc.) and the general journal would be for entries not in a special journal.

As Michael Novak pointed out these notions originate in paper accounting and
for small business and personal accounting may not have much use.
With an electronic system such as gnucash and only one book the system is
ledger oriented. One can see the journal entries affecting one account by
selecting Transaction Journal under View. The General Ledger under Tools
shows what is like a journal except that some history is lost because the
entries may be changed without the use of a correcting journal entry. With
that in mind and the distinction noted above, this seems to be a general
ledger rather than a general journal unless one uses strict accounting
practice (once a transaction is entered it is forever; the effect is changed
by a new correcting transaction.) Some transaction oriented systems have an
audit trail which is equivalent to a general journal.

Dale

On 02/26/2018 09:08 AM, Leo Bolta wrote:
> I never majored in accounting but I can still remember "General Journal"
> being a standard term often used in Canadian high school accounting 
> about 50 years ago.  Recently I picked up an Ontario, Canada 
> bookkeeping text book from 1882.  It makes a distinction between what 
> are called "Day Books, Journals and Ledgers".  I'll try to photograph 
> some relative pages in the next few days and attach them in a post.
> Leo    
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gnucash-user
> [mailto:gnucash-user-bounces+lbolta=rogers.com at gnucash.org] On Behalf 
> Of Buddha Buck
> Sent: February-26-18 7:34 AM
> To: elvis
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: General Ledger
> 
> It's not an Australian accounting thing, unless I managed to grab 
> Australian book out of my small-city upstate New York library system 
> some 30 years ago...
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 5:38 AM elvis <elvis at dogonfire.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 25/02/18 07:54, Dave H wrote:
>>> Well from my point of view that is confusing.  Nobody in my world 
>>> refers
>> to
>>> a "General Journal" we refer to the "General Ledger" and we do 
>>> journals
>>> :-)  I've never actually heard the term general journal used 
>>> anywhere before until this discussion over the weekend !!!
>>
>> You weren't in my accounting class where we got the use of the 
>> general journal beaten into us :-) I can still remember it 30 years
later.
>> Maybe it's an Australian accounting thing.
>>> Cheers Dave H.
>>>
>>> On 24 February 2018 at 19:58, Geert Janssens 
>>> <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be
>>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>
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