General Ledger

Wm wm_o_o_o at yahoo.co.uk
Fri Mar 2 14:06:28 EST 2018


On 23/02/2018 21:52, Buddha Buck wrote:
> I suspect that GnuCash terminology regarding journals and ledgers is
> somewhat confused and non-standard.

yeah, they are convenience terms

> 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).

that has varied between countries historically

in some it was
"everything goes in the big book and you pull out the sales"
and in others it was
"you enter everything in the sales book and then transfer it to the big 
book"

gnc and other transaction streams supersede those views.

> 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.

Depending on where you learned your accounting :)

> I don't know what GnuCash is calling a general
> journal.

C'mon GnuCash is a transaction stream application with a few tweaks.  It 
isn't calling anything.

-- 
Wm






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