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- Small Business Accounting
- Features
- General ledger
General ledger
Keep a traceable ledger behind daily transactions and financial statements. A correcting journal might debit repairs expense and credit office expense to move a cost into the right classification. Equal debit and credit totals are necessary, but the reviewer also needs the original document and reason. Posting the correction preserves the earlier entry so the financial history explains both the mistake and its authorized resolution.
OverviewJournal Approval Inbox×
Small Business Accounting · General ledger
New
Journal Approval Inbox
Approval conditions
| Journal entry number | Date | Description | Total debit | Total credit | Prepared by | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JE-29031 | 22 Oct | Monthly rent for workshop | 350 | 350 | Sara Nguyen | |
| JE-98273 | 16 Oct | Customer payment on April invoice | 630 | 630 | Idris Hassan | |
| JE-87145 | 15 Oct | Supplier bill for packaging | 440 | 440 | Felix Weber | |
| JE-35141 | 22 Oct | Payroll funding transfer | 170 | 170 | Noor Alami | |
| JE-49973 | 09 Oct | Bank fee for outgoing wire | 760 | 760 | Felix Weber |
6 of 6 records
Monthly rent for workshopJournal entries · JE-29031
SubmittedDate22 Oct
Total debit350
Total credit350
Prepared bySara Nguyen
What you can do
Keep the business context together
Accounts define the financial classification, normal balance, currency context and entity. Journal lines retain the debit and credit amounts and source reference needed to explain a balance. Draft and submitted entries remain separate from posted books; statements must use the selected reporting period and posted entries only.
This product owns the general ledger. Its local posting operation validates accounts, balances, entity, currency and the open period, then writes the journal and posted result together. It does not wait for a different accounting application to declare its own books complete. A connected bank remains responsible for reporting actual payment settlement.
Give each decision a clear owner
Controller / CFO reviews a manual journal before posting. A reviewer cannot approve their own prepared entry. Posting requires balanced debits and credits, valid accounts and an open period, with a stable operation identifier that prevents a repeated command from adding the journal twice.
Journal preparation and journal approval can involve people with the same Controller / CFO role, but they must be different people for an independent decision. The submitted revision identifies the lines being reviewed. Changing an account, debit or credit after submission requires a fresh decision before those changed values can reach the posted ledger.
Handle exceptions with the original record
Changing an account name must not rewrite earlier postings. A closed period blocks ordinary backdated work. Correct a posted journal through a linked reversal and replacement in an authorized period; preserve both entries and their approval history for the reporting trail.
Unposted Journal Entries shows preparation work; the approval inbox shows journals submitted for review. Neither population belongs in a posted trial balance. After a successful posting, the entry becomes available to ledger detail and statements once. Repeating the same posting request returns that result rather than creating another set of journal lines.
Find the work that needs attention
A closed period remains protected even when a user changes a document date or imports an older transaction. Use an authorized current-period correction or the recorded reopening procedure. Posting and period close must coordinate the same lock so that a transaction cannot arrive just after the controller believes the books are closed.
Configure it around your business
Configure the chart of accounts, reporting classifications, currencies and opening balances with the person responsible for the books. Reconcile the opening trial balance and a correcting journal before everyday processing. Account renaming should improve presentation while preserving account identity, posted history and the path from each statement balance to the underlying entries.
What your team sees
- Unposted Journal Entries — Review the work and supporting records for this module.
What it keeps track of
Data model- Chart of accounts
- The account master. Self-parenting tree supports roll-up into summary accounts. Optional
Entitytag on each account for the two-to-three entity case. - Journal entries
- GL journal entries — manual, subledger-auto-posted, or reversing. State:
Draft → Posted → Reversed. - Journal entry lines
- Line-level debits and credits with account and optional FX amount.
- Accounting periods
- Fiscal periods with simple open/closed state. Closed periods reject new postings unless the Controller reopens them.
- Currencies
- ISO currency codes.
- Exchange rates
- Daily FX rates for conversion into home currency. Lightweight — only
SpotandAveragerate types.
Who uses it
Permissions- Controller / CFO
- Controller / CFO works within the record, field and action scope below.
- Admin
- Admin works within the record, field and action scope below.
- Viewer
- Viewer works within the record, field and action scope below.
Set up Small Business Accounting your way.
Start free, then use Proto to change fields, steps and approvals before your team goes live.