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Introduction

This topic deals with the General Journal feature in Total Office Manager. This feature is similar to the “register” feature found in some accounting software but much better. Total Office Manager’s General Journal includes far more details, power, and options than a plain old register or even a General Ledger.

Usage

Use the General Journal to view a detailed list of all transactions that have taken place in Total Office Manager. The General Journal displays every purchase, sales, deposit, etc. For example, when you make a sale and save an invoice, Total Office Manager will add entries to the register which include a line item (an entry into the register) for every account that was affected in ANY way by the sale. All income COGS, discounts, etc., will be shown. The General Journal is like a piece of diagnostic equipment that allows you to see the actual inter-workings of the accounting engine.

Accountants and sophisticated bookkeepers use the General Journal to analyze their accounting records . The General Journal makes it possible to locate problems and fix them. If you cannot figure out why your financial statements don’t look right (maybe income is too low or rent is too high), the General Journal will show you the transaction, account affected, amounts, and the resulting balance.

The best way to learn the about the General Journal is to simply examine it. Open it up after you enter a transaction like an invoice or a check and see how Total Office Manager disburses the amounts to the various accounts (Chart of Accounts).

Form Access

  • From the main menu, click Banking | General Journal

Field and Button Definitions

Columns

ID: A number assigned by Total Office Manager to help identify the transaction. Use this number to help group individual parts of a transaction. Note that a sale is one transaction but may involve numerous transactions. This number is automatically assigned by Total Office Manager and can’t be changed.

Account: The account that is affected. This account comes from your Chart of Accounts.

Type: The type of transaction. Each account is assigned a transaction type (Example: Income, Expense, Asset, Current Liability, etc).

Date: The date of the transaction. This is the date that the transaction was created.

Trans. Type: This field identifies the specific kind of transaction it is. Examples may include Check, Journal Entry, CC Charge, Invoice, etc. In many cases, this name will be the same or close to the name of the form that was used to enter the transaction.

Debit: Shows the amount that was debited. Please see glossary term “debit” for more information.

Credit: Shows the amount that was credited. Please see glossary term “credit” for more information.

Debit Total: This is the total of all debits in the column. Please note that if you are using the filter feature, only the transaction shown in the list will be totaled. This could cause your General Journal to look as if it is out of balance even though it may not be.

Credit Total: This is the total of all credits in the column. Please note that if you are using the filter feature, only the transaction shown in the list will be totaled. This could cause your General Journal to look as if it is out of balance even though it may not be.

Menu Definitions

View Transaction: Certain transactions can be viewed when you right click on the transaction list and select this option. Examples of these include invoices, checks, bills, etc. If you get a message indicating that displaying the transaction is not possible than the transaction is an internal one (not one you created) and therefor cannot be displayed.

Find Missing Accounts: This feature locates transactions that contain missing accounts (like an item with a missing income account). There really should never be a time when a transaction or other record is saved with an account missing but unforeseen circumstances can cause data to become lost.

Find Out of Balance Transactions: This feature locates transactions that are not in balance (credits and debits are not equal). There really should never be a time when a transaction is out of balance but unforeseen circumstances can cause this to occur.

Rebuild Journal: This procedure rebuilds ALL of the transactions in Total Office Manager (including the three other rebuild options below ). Basically every calculated field in the company file is recalculated and verified. This function is useful when you suspect your data has errors. Caution: This procedure can take a very long time. If you need to rebuild your data, please consider doing it when no one else is logged into Total Office Manager and you do not need Total Office Manager for hours.

Rebuild Balances: Rebuilds customer and vendor balances only.

Rebuild Item Register: Rebuilds the item register. The item register contains information about inventory items such average costing, quantity on-hand, etc.

Rebuild Payroll Splits: Rebuilds payroll related numbers in Total Office Manager.
Close Total Office Manager After Rebuild (checkbox)

This option is handy if you have a large company file. You can do your rebuild at the end of the day with this option and go home. Note: If your company stores the company file on a computer with a nightly auto backup system (highly recommended), Total Office Manager must be closed for the backup to occur.

Export: This option allows you to export the entire contents of the general journal to a text file. This file will be formatted to be opened with MS Excel® or other programs.

Help: Launches this help topic.

Step-By-Step

  1. Open the General Journal per the instructions above.
  2. Sort or Filter the list as needed.
  3. Look for the transactions that you wish to examine. Right click to view details.

Tips

  • If you see a row with a yellow background, this indicates the highlighted transaction is out of balance. You can go to the transaction, examine it, and correct it as needed.
  • This form does not refresh automatically. If you make changes in the program with the GJ open, be sure to close the form and reopen it to refresh the contents.
  • It is possible that different transactions could have the same ID number. The Transaction ID number is assigned randomly by Total Office Manager, but Total Office Manager does not first check to make sure the number has been used. If in doubt, also check the date. It’s very unlikely that different transactions will have the same ID number and date.
  • The General Journal should always be in balance. This means that credits must always equals debits (see the totals at the bottom of the list).
  • The General Journal list can get huge and therefor perhaps hard to read. The filter and sort feature of the list allows you to easily remove any transactions you do not want to look at.
  • Use the sort capability to see the most current transactions. If you have a lot of them, use the filter capability to view only the type of transactions that you need to see.
  • Use the date range filter feature to view only the day that you suspect the transaction you are looking for occurred.
  • Chart of Accounts Types used in Total Office Manager: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Bank, Cost of Goods Sold, Credit Card, Equity, Expense, Fixed Asset, Income, Long Term, Liability, Other Asset, Other Current Asset, Other Current Liability, and Other Expense.
  • The following is a list of the various Transaction Types used in Total Office Manager: Bill, CC Charge, CC Credit, Check, Credit, Deposit, Inventory Adjustment, Invoice  Item Receipt, Journal Entry, Liability Adjustment, Payment, Payroll Check, Payroll Liability Check, Sale, Sales Tax Liability Check, Serialized, Vendor Credit, and YTD Adjustment.

NOTE: The four rebuild options (noted above) should be used only by our technical support personal or upon their advice. These Rebuild features repopulate the general journal with data from other parts of the database. Rebuild basically means to restore and recalculate.