The journal
The chronological record of every double-entry posting: how it fills itself, the three health checks, and why an entry is never rewritten.
The journal is the chronological record of your bookkeeping: every transaction appears there in double entry, a debit and a credit that balance. It is what takes your church from a cash book to real accounting.
It is also the book every other one derives from. The trial balance, the general ledger, the income statement and the statement of net assets are only different ways of re-reading this same journal.
You never write an entry
This is the point that reassures treasurers most, and it deserves saying first: you do not write debits or credits. You record "offering, 240, cash" as usual, and the entry is born behind you, from your category and your payment method.
| What you record | The derived entry |
|---|---|
| Tithe, 100, cash | Debit 571 Cash 100 · Credit 7300 Tithes 100 |
| Rent, 850, transfer | Debit 6100 Rent 850 · Credit 550 Bank 850 |
| Online gift, 50 | Debit 550 Bank 50 · Credit 7400 Gifts 50 |
The rule is always the same: the category gives the income or expense account, the payment method gives the cash account. If either is wrong, so is the entry.
Note: that is why choosing the category matters more than it seems. It is not a filing label, it is what decides the account.
Reading the journal
- Open Finance, then Reports, Accounting section, Journal tab.
- Choose the period at the top of the page.
- The first block says whether the book is healthy. Three checks must read zero.
The book is shown in slices. When there are more lines than the slice displayed, the screen tells you how many remain: a silent truncation would let you believe the book stops there.
The three checks, and why they matter
Unbalanced. An entry whose debit does not equal its credit corrupts every downstream figure. This number must stay at zero, without exception and without tolerance.
Numbering gaps. The law requires a journal numbered without interruption. A missing number is a formal defect that can be held against you during an audit, even if every figure is otherwise right.
Without an entry. Transactions recorded that do not have a posting yet. They appear neither in the general ledger, nor in the income statement, nor in net assets: your Finance dashboard counts them, your accounting books ignore them. It is the most frequent divergence, and the most unsettling when discovered late.
Note: if you have just created your chart of accounts, your earlier transactions have no entry yet. The Catch up button posts them all, in chronological order. You can run it as often as you like: it duplicates nothing.
An entry is never rewritten
Correcting or cancelling a transaction does not rewrite its entry. The system creates the reversing entry, dated today, pointing at the original. Both stay visible, the reversal carries an icon, and the original appears struck through.
This is deliberate, and it is what makes your accounting defensible: anyone can retrace the path and understand what happened. An entry that could be retouched would prove nothing.
The two levels of correction
Not all corrections are equal, and confusing the two produces either a false story or an unreadable one.
| What you want to do | The action | What the journal becomes |
|---|---|---|
| The transaction is right, it is just filed wrongly | Reclassify (change the category) | The income or expense line of the entry changes account. The cash line does not move: it was right. |
| The transaction should not exist, or its amount is wrong | Cancel | A reversing entry is created. Both stay in the journal. |
Reclassifying creates no reversal, because nothing new happened: the money did move, it was simply filed in the wrong place. Cancelling creates one, because a fact has been denied.
Warning: never correct a wrong amount with a second "catch-up" entry. Your cash will add up, but your journal will tell two transactions where only one happened, and your bank reconciliation will never find its way again.
The period lock holds the journal
It is the lock in the Governance tab that prevents inserting an entry into a month already closed, and therefore guarantees your book stays chronological.
A journal without a lock stays a draft: nothing prevents slipping in an entry dated last month, after that month's report has gone to the board.
Tip: close each month as soon as it is over, even quiet ones. It is one click, and it is what turns your journal into a register.
Common mistakes
- Creating the chart of accounts late and not running Catch up. The journal then stays partial, and so does everything derived from it.
- Ignoring the "Without an entry" counter. It does not clear itself when the cause is a category with no account: it is the Chart of accounts tab you need to open, not the Catch up button.
- Reading the journal to find a balance. That is not its job. For a balance, go to the trial balance; for the story of one account, to the general ledger.