Journal entries are for accounting adjustments that are not a normal invoice or payment - accruals, corrections, reclassifications, or period-end entries your accountant prepares.
Open Accounting → Journal Entries.
What you can do
- Create multi-line journals with debits and credits
- Submit balanced entries to post to GL
- Post party-linked lines to the payment ledger (when a customer or supplier is on a line)
- Cancel submitted journals to reverse
Statuses
Draft → Submitted → (optional) Cancelled
Creating a journal entry
- 1
Go to Accounting → Journal Entries and create a new entry.
- 2
Enter journal number and posting date.
- 3
Add lines - account, debit or credit amount, and optional remarks.
- 4
Ensure total debits equal credits (the form disables create until balanced).
- 5
Save as draft, then Submit to post.
Balancing rule
Every journal must balance: total debits = total credits (within a small rounding tolerance). The UI shows running totals and blocks submission until balanced.
Party lines
If a line includes a customer or supplier, submit also creates a payment ledger entry for that party. Use this for AR/AP adjustments that are not invoice-based.
Payments vs journal entries
| Payment entry | Journal entry | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Real cash movement against invoices | Manual GL adjustment |
| Typical user | Operations / finance clerk | Accountant |
| Allocates to invoices | Yes | No |
When to use which
Use payments when money actually moved and settles invoices. Use journal entries for corrections, accruals, and non-cash adjustments.
Cancelling
Only submitted journals can be cancelled. Reversal removes GL and any related payment ledger lines.