About the General Ledger

The general ledger is used to test clearing accounts for a zero balance (i.e., quickly look at balances without detail) and to look for unusual entries (e.g., debit entries in revenue accounts or credit entries in expense accounts). It’s a summary of activity by journal, by month, and is primarily used for review and control procedures. It provides nine industry specific charts of accounts and gives you the option of customizing the start-up chart for your company. It is comprised of a general set and a sub set.

Gen Chart (Chart of Accounts)

  • The gen chart is the backbone of your ledger and reporting system. Once setup, it rarely changes
  • In a large company, it is referred to as the “Uniform Chart of Accounts”
  • The gen set can be up to 5 digits with a maximum of 999 accounts
  • You can search by description or number

Sub Chart

The sub account can be up to 12 digits, and there is no practical limit to the number of sub accounts. The sub chart of accounts changes continuously (e.g., new, change, or inactive). You can modify the sub chart of accounts in any function and can limit access to subs using five attributes. You can search by description, number, or string (hyper search). The hyper search looks for a string match in the name or address fields. The sub chart divides into sets for: banks, customers, vendors, employees, fixed assets, jobs, departments, profit centers, cost centers, notes receivable, notes payable, shareholders, partners, funds, worker comp classes, etc. You are limited to 99 sets.

Link

The link defines sets of subs, and it is a prefix to the sub account and a suffix to the gen account.

The linker is what makes single-file design work. The link is used to define structure, not enter data.

The following defines two links:

Link Description
22 Customer
44 Vendor

Links in the sub chart:

Link Sub Description
22 110 ABC Customer
22 130 DEF Customer
22 140 GHI Customer
44 110 PQR Vendor
44 130 STU Vendor
44 140 XYZ Vendor

Links in the gen chart:

Gen Link Description
1400 22 A/R – Trade
1450 22 A/R – Allowance for Doubtful Accounts
3100 44 A/P – Trade
3150 44 A/P – Holding

You have 4 gen accounts and 6 sub accounts, but 12 accounts as follows:

Gen Sub Description Description
1400 110 A/R – Trade ABC Customer
1400 130 A/R – Trade DEF Customer
1400 140 A/P – Trade GHI Customer
1450 110 A/R – Doubtful ABC Customer
1450 130 A/R – Doubtful DEF Customer
1450 140 A/R – Doubtful GHI Customer
3100 110 A/P – Trade PQR Vendor
3100 130 A/P – Trade STU Vendor
3100 140 A/P – Trade XYZ Vendor
3150 110 A/P – Hold PQR Vendor
3150 130 A/P – Hold STU Vendor
3150 140 A/P – Hold XYZ Vendor

Receivables

You can assign 16 gen accounts as receivables, where you track by invoice number. In addition, you can assign 2 gen accounts “by balance,” where they track by balance, similar to a credit card statement.

Payables

You can assign 16 gen accounts as payables, where you track by invoice number.

Journal Entries

There are various functions available to enter journal entries:

  • Recurring (by month, day, or year)
  • Reversing (into the next day)
  • Forward (future period)
  • Backward (prior period) with retro year re-open
  • Manual

Rounding

You have three options:

  1. Cents
  2. Dollars
  3. Thousands