The General Ledger is at the center of the company's finances - it gives you an overview of the financial situation. It also provides information about expenses and revenues to compare with budgets and with figures from previous years. This lets you identify income-generating areas, avoid losses, adjust unrealistic budgets, and so on.
You use the G/L Account table, which contains all the accounts, to manage your finances. When you set up an account, you enter basic information such as the name of the account and the account type. The account must also have an identifying number. When you enter this number in various fields in the program - in a journal, for example - the program will automatically use the basic information from the account.
The program can display G/L accounts in two different windows:
The Chart of Accounts window displays all the accounts, with a line for each, so you can see only a limited number of fields for each account. It is possible to organize the chart of accounts so that it can be used as a daily balance sheet because each account has several amount fields: Balance, Balance at Date and Net Change.
The G/L Account Card window has a card for each line in the chart of accounts, so you can work with only one account at a time. On the other hand, you can see many more fields for that account.
The same fields exist for both windows, and both windows provide the same possibilities for editing the field contents.
All G/L accounts must be set up in this table.