JOURNAL

GENERAL JOURNAL

 General journal is the master journal that all company transactions or journal entries are
recorded in. A typical general journal has at least five columns which is one for the date,
account titles, posting reference, debit, and credit columns.

FORMAT

It provides the chronological order of all non-specialized activities. It consists of 4 or 5 columns:

 Date of transaction
 Short description/memo
 Debit amount
 Credit amount
 A reference number (referencing to journal ledger as an easy indicator)

EXAMPLE

In the above table general journal examples, we can see each transaction was recorded as two lines-

one debit and one credit account.

PURCHASE JOURNAL

 Purchase journals are special journals used by an organization to keep track of all the credit

purchases. It is also known as Purchase book or Purchase daybook.

 All types of purchases made on credit are recorded in the purchases journal, including the

following:

 Office supplies

 Services

 Goods acquired for resale

SALES JOURNAL

 Sales journal is a subsidiary ledger used to store detailed sales transactions. Its main purpose

is to remove a source of high-volume transactions from the general ledger, thereby

streamlining the general ledger.

 The following information is typically stored in the sales journal for each sale transaction:

 Transaction date

 Account number

 Customer name

 Invoice number

 Sale amount (debit the accounts receivable account and credit the sale account)

 The information recorded in the sales journal depends on the nature and needs of each
individual business. However, a commonly used format of sales journal is given below: