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Macon-Knoxville, GA Store Ledger, 1825–1831. A ledger [1] is a book or collection of accounts in which accounting transactions are recorded. Each account has: an opening or brought-forward balance; a list of transactions, each recorded as either a debit or credit in separate columns (usually with a counter-entry on another page)
Accounts are used in the generation of a trial balance, a list of the active general ledger accounts with their respective debit and credit balances used to test the completeness of a set of accounts: if the debit and credit totals match, the indication is that the accounts are being correctly maintained. However, a balanced trial balance does ...
The general ledger contains a page for all accounts in the chart of accounts [5] arranged by account categories. The general ledger is usually divided into at least seven main categories: assets, liabilities, owner's equity, revenue, expenses, gains and losses. [6] It is the system of record for an organization’s financial transactions. [7]
These entries, referred to as postings, become part of a book of final entry or ledger. Examples of common financial accounts are sales, accounts [1] receivable, mortgages, loans, PP&E, common stock, sales, services, wages and payroll.
The double entry system uses nominal ledger accounts. From these nominal ledger accounts, a trial balance can be created. The trial balance lists all the nominal ledger account balances. The list is split into two columns, with debit balances placed in the left hand column and credit balances placed in the right hand column.
Before the advent of computerized accounting, manual accounting procedure used a ledger book for each T-account. The collection of all these books was called the general ledger. The chart of accounts is the table of contents of the general ledger.
Individual transactions are posted both to the controlling account and the corresponding subsidiary ledger, and the totals for both are compared when preparing a trial balance to ensure accuracy. For example, "accounts receivable" is the controlling account for the accounts receivable subsidiary ledger. In this subsidiary ledger, each credit ...
Using the rules of double-entry, these journal summaries are then transferred to their respective accounts in the ledger, or account book. For example, the entries in the Sales Journal are taken and a debit entry is made in each customer's account (showing that the customer now owes us money), and a credit entry might be made in the account for ...