What is a general ledger?
When you’re doing your accounting there are lots of reports you can use to understand your finances. Find out all about the general ledger and how it helps you do your accounting.
What is a general ledger?
The ledger contains business transactions sorted by account. This gives you a useful overview of the accounts and transactions linked to the selected period.
In your general ledger you can see the balance of each account, specific journal entries in each account, and whether these journal entries were debited or credited.
Bokio accounting software automatically generates your general ledger when you record transactions. It’s important to make sure that you’re uploading transactions regularly so that your general ledger will be up to date when you check on it.
How to read your general ledger
In Bokio, your general ledger is organised by account. You can see the opening and closing balance for the account in the period you have selected.
When you view each account, you can see all the journal entries in each account including their debit and credit balance. If you’re confused about debit and credit, check out our help guide to find out how it works.
How to use your general ledger
It’s most useful to look at your general ledger by period. In Bokio accounting software, you can use a date selector to see your general ledger for a specific month or year.
Check for errors
The general ledger is a great place to start checking for errors in accounting. If you’re noticing discrepancies in your bookkeeping, you can look in your general ledger for an overview of allocations between the accounts.
For example, if you notice the balance of one account is unusually high or low, you can go in and check if you’re missing any transactions, or if you’ve recorded anything incorrectly.
Reconcile your accounts
Reconciling your accounts is the process of checking whether your company account balance in your accounting is the same as your bank account balance.
If you’re doing this without an automated general ledger it can be time consuming, but not with Bokio. All you need to do is choose the dates on your general ledger and compare it with your bank account balance for that period. You can identify any problems quickly and make sure your accounts are reconciled.
Do your accounting with Bokio
Bokio is a simple way to do your accounting, invoicing and more online. Our software takes you through the process step by step, with time saving features like automated bank feeds, smart bookkeeping templates and integrated invoicing. If you need help with your accounting, you can invite your accountant or colleagues to work together in Bokio.
