General journal vs general ledger: What’s the difference? 

Want to keep your financial records accurate and organized? Your accountant or finance team can help with that.  

But if you’re in a management position of a small, medium-sized, or growing company, it’s important that you have a grasp of how your financial record-keeping and reporting works.  

Your general journal and general ledger are key players in your financial toolkit.  

Both are essential for any business, forming a core part of your accounting system. They provide the foundation for recording, organizing, and summarizing all your financial transactions.   

But what exactly are they used for, and how are they different?  

Explore this guide to general journals versus general ledgers to better understand what they do and their main differences.   

Here’s what we’ll cover: 

What is a general journal and what is its purpose?

In accounting, the general journal, or journal entries, is a chronological log of every event, with all the important details:  

• The date 

• The accounts involved 

• The amounts debited and credited 

• A short description. 

Examples of general journal entries are things like asset sales, depreciation, interest income and interest expense, and stock sales and repurchases. 

This initial record is crucial for maintaining accuracy in your accounting. It helps you make sure that every transaction is accounted for and nothing slips through the cracks.  

What is a general ledger and what is its purpose?

Once you’ve recorded everything in the general journal, these entries are posted to the general ledger.  

The general ledger is a complete record of your business’s financial activity, sorting transactions by account, making it easy to generate reports and analyze your financial data.  

It summarizes all your financial transactions across various accounts, organized into categories such as: 

• Assets (what you own) 

• Liabilities (what you owe) 

• Revenue (what you earn). 

It’s the central hub for your financial information. You can see how money flows in and out of your business, which helps you create important financial reports like your balance sheet and income statement.  

These reports give you a clear picture of your business’s financial health. 

The general ledger also ensures your accounts stay balanced by following the accounting equation:  

Assets = Liabilities + Equity 

This built-in balancing act helps you keep your finances organized and make informed business decisions.

Key differences: General journal vs general ledger

The general ledger and journal play different roles in your accounting, so they have slightly different structures and components.  

Here’s a breakdown of the key differences: 

Level of detail 

One of the main differences between a general journal and a general ledger is the level of detail recorded.  

Your general journal is your raw data, with individual transaction details listed in date order.  

This makes it easy to trace specific transactions, for example, for auditing purposes or if you need to check any discrepancies in your financial information.  

Your general ledger, on the other hand, focuses on the bigger picture.  

It summarized your transactions, organizing everything into categories such as assets and liabilities, to help you understand your overall financial health.

Transaction type 

The general journal is your record of all kinds of financial transactions.  

This includes non-routine or complex transactions that don’t fit neatly into specialized journals, such as depreciation, accruals, and big purchases and sales. 

The general ledger is focused on tracking important transactions from the journal, categorizing them into five core accounting types:  

• Assets 

• Liabilities 

• Owner’s capital 

• Revenues 

• Expenses.  

It’s your go-to central information source for financial reporting and analysis.

Corrective entries 

Everyone makes mistakes, and accounting is no exception.  

You’ll use your general journal to record corrections, whether it’s fixing an error or making adjustments at the end of a period so that your reports are accurate. 

The general ledger reflects the outcome of these corrections, but it’s not where you actually make the adjustments.  

The journal is where you make the changes, while the ledger shows the final, corrected results.

Preparation of trial balance and financial statements 

Your general journal keeps a careful record of every transaction, but it doesn’t create your financial statements directly. It simply provides a chronological list of the raw data.  

The general ledger takes over from there.  

It organizes that data by account, allowing you to create a trial balance.  

A trial balance shows all your account balances at a specific time. This trial balance then becomes the basis for creating financial statements, such as your balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. 

Double-entry accounting  

Both the general journal and the general ledger are key players in double-entry accounting.  

This means they both record each transaction with two entries: a debit and a credit. This ensures that your accounts stay balanced.  

These matching journal and ledger entries are essential for accurate bookkeeping. 

The journal lists these debits and credits for every transaction. The ledger takes those entries and organizes them by account.  

This helps you see how each transaction affects your overall financial position, and it ensures the fundamental accounting equation (assets = liabilities + equity) always stays in balance.

Summary of key differences

Function	General journal	General ledger
Level of detail	Highly detailed	Basic summary
Transaction type	All types	Reflects journal
Corrective entries	Essential for corrections	Reflects journal
Preparation of trial balance and financial statements	Not used directly	Primary source for reports
Double-entry accounting	Reflects double-entry	Reflects double-entry

Ledger and journal examples: Basic structure

Let’s use an office supplies purchase as an example for comparing the ledger and the journal.  

General journal example 

Essential columns: Date, Description, Account(s) Debited, Account(s) Credited, Debit Amount, Credit Amount. 

Example entry:  

• Date: August 25, 2024 

• Description: Purchased office supplies on credit 

• Debit: Office Supplies Expense 

• Credit: Accounts Payable 

• Debit Amount: $500 

• Credit Amount: $500

General ledger example 

To reflect both the outgoing expense and the source from which it was financed, the general ledger covers this transaction with dual entries in the expense account and accounts payable. 

Essential columns: Date, Description, Debit Amount, Credit Amount, Running Balance. 

Example for office supplies expense account: 

• Date: August 25, 2024 

• Description: Purchase on Credit 

• Debit Amount: $500 

• Credit Amount: $0 

• Balance: $500 

Example for accounts payable account: 

• Date: August 25, 2024 

• Description: Purchase on Credit 

• Debit Amount: $0 

• Credit Amount: $500 

• Balance: $500 

Automate your general ledger and general journal

You can automate both your general journal and general ledger with modern accounting software.  

This means transactions are automatically updated in both by the software. No more manual entry for the general ledger vs journal—the software handles it all.  

This saves you time and minimizes the risk of human errors. 

Ledger accounting software also takes care of keeping your account balances up to date and generating reports.  

You’ll have real-time insights into your financial standing, with instant financial statements and customizable dashboards.

Final thoughts

To keep your finances organized, you need to do two things:  

• Track your transactions in chronological order 

• Make sure each transaction is assigned to the correct account. 

The general journal and general ledger are essential for this. They’re the tools you’ll use to maintain order in your accounting system. 

But to be truly efficient, you need to connect these tools with the rest of your financial systems. 

By understanding how these tools work and getting the right software solutions in place, you can simplify and automate your financial processes and reporting.  

Bring all your accounting functions into a single, unified view, saving you admin time that can be spent on working towards your business goals.