Journal Entry Overview and Topics

The majority of Journal Entries posted to the General Ledger are performed automatically when a transaction is saved by a User.  Nearly every company will still need to create manual journal entries as a part of normal bookkeeping such as depreciation, payroll, accruals, etc..
Control Accounts
Within the SedonaOffice setup tables are several GL Accounts which are Control Accounts used for posting transactions "behind the scenes".  These are considered "sacred" accounts and manual Journal Entries should never be posted to any of these accounts.  If a User was to post a manual Journal Entry to any of these accounts, your company will not be able to balance SedonaOffice transactional reports to the General Ledger.  All of the SedonaOffice reports extract data from the GL Register depending on the transactions posted by Users.  These transactional reports do not include manual Journal Entries.  If your company finds it needs to make an adjusting entry into any of the Control Accounts, please contact the SedonaOffice Support department for assistance on how to accomplish the desired result.

A listing of Control Accounts is listed below.
  After reviewing all the areas where control accounts exist, it is a good idea to make a listing of your company's control account numbers to reference when considering creating manual Journal Entries.
Two main areas of Control Account numbers are found in SedonaSetup GL Account Defaults for AP and GL Account Defaults for AR.  There is one exception to the rule of not creating a manual Journal Entry into control accounts.  Bank Accounts; the beginning bank account balance entered with the initial Trial Balance JE load and Payroll Journal entries are acceptable.

 

SedonaSetup/Tax Table Setup:  Sales Tax GL Account

SedonaSetup/Inventory Setup:  Transfer Account, Physical Adjustment Account, Inventory Asset Account.

SedonaSetup/Warehouse Setup:  Inventory Asset Account.  If your company has multiple warehouses, there may be multiple GL Accounts assigned to the various warehouses.

SedonaSetup/Install Company Setup:  WIP Accounts; Labor, Parts, Misc.  As of SedonaOffice version 5.2.102,  WIP accounts are not considered Control Accounts, however these will become control accounts in the very near future.
WIP accounts are also located found on the following SedonaSetup forms:
Job Type/Detail and Costing tabs, JM Setup Processing, Service Company/Labor Setup tab, and Setup Defaults for Service.


Journal Templates
If the same Journal Entry is posted every month, the User may create a Journal Template with all the required account number information, then retrieve the template and post with the desired posting date.  If the amounts on the Journal Entry change from month to month, the amounts on the template may be modified prior to posting.  Using Journal Templates saves a great deal of data entry time.

Importing a Journal Entry from Excel
Journal Entries may also be imported from an Excel Workbook.  Refer to the topic link below for more information on this feature.

Correcting Errors
If an error was made on the Journal Entry, the only field that may be edited is the Category.  If the incorrect account number or any other information was incorrect, the User may delete the entire Journal Entry and then re-enter.  Only Journal Entries manually created may be deleted provided the original posting date is in an Accounting Period where the status is set to Open or Re-Open and the User has the appropriate User permissions to do so.

Follow the topic links below for detailed instructions related to Journal Entries.

Journal Entry Form Definitions

Creating a Manual Journal Entry

Importing a Journal Entry from Excel

Exporting a Journal Entry to Excel

Journal Templates