General Ledger

The ledger is the principal book or file for recording and totaling monetary transactions by account, with debits and credits in separate columns and a balance for each account. The ledger is a permanent summary of all amounts entered in supporting journals that list individual transactions by date. Every transaction flows from a journal to one or more ledgers. An organization’s financial statements are generated from summary totals in the ledgers.

For every debit recorded in a ledger, there must be a corresponding credit so that the debits equal the credits in the grand totals. Each individual ledger should be balanced. The General Ledger is the final repository of the accounting records and data transferred from all sub-ledgers or modules like accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, fixed assets, purchasing, and projects.