General Ledger > Fundamentals of General Ledger

All Journal Entries, regardless of whether they originate in the General Ledger itself or within other applications, have a common structure.

Each Journal Entry is uniquely identified by its GlTransID.

The Transaction date (GlTransDate) is the applicable date for the transaction i.e. the date of a Journal Entry. The Transaction date determines the fiscal period affected by a transaction.

The Origin Date is the date that transaction was entered into the system and is derived from the system date. It is useful for administrative purposes but has no other effect

Information common to the entire Journal Entry, such as the GlTransID and dates described above, together with optional Reference and Notes fields (and CurrencyID and CurrencyRate as applicable) are saved in the transaction record.

The details of a Journal Entry specify the Debits and Credits to the affected General Ledger Accounts and are saved in the transaction detail table. Each record specifies a General Ledger Account and the Debit or Credit to that Account. Since Debits must equal Credits there are always at least two detail records (and usually more) for each Journal Entry.

General Journal Entries

General Journal Entry transactions are those that originate within the General Ledger itself. This includes those you enter directly using the Transactions | Enter General Journal Entries task as well as those from the Transactions | Import General Journal Entries task and the Transactions | Recurring Journal Entries task.

Journal Entries from other applications

General Ledger transactions can also originate from other applications. For example the Accounts Payable | Transactions | Generate Payables Journal Entries task generates Journal Entries into the General Ledger for those transactions that have been posted to Accounts Payable and have not yet been posted to the General Ledger. These Journal Entries summarize the General Ledger effects of those transactions.

Debits and Credits

Most forms and reports show Debit and Credit amounts in separate columns. When there is not sufficient space to present them in this manner it uses a single Amount field and shows Debits as positive values and Credits as negative values.