The general ledger and journals
This guide is for readers who want to understand the bookkeeping that sits behind Sales Scribe — for example a bookkeeper or accountant reviewing the figures. You do not need any of this to use Sales Scribe day to day; it runs automatically.
What the general ledger is
The general ledger is the complete, permanent record of every financial transaction in your organisation, organised by ledger account. Every action that has a bookkeeping consequence — issuing an invoice, recording a payment, voiding a document — adds to it.
Your reports are summaries drawn from the general ledger. The Profit and Loss, for instance, is built from the ledger entries on your income and expense accounts.
What a journal is
Each of those actions produces one journal — a single balanced set of entries whose debits equal its credits. For example, issuing a £1,200 invoice (£1,000 net + £200 VAT) produces one journal:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts Receivable | 1,200.00 | |
| Sales / Revenue | 1,000.00 | |
| Output VAT | 200.00 |
The debits (1,200.00) equal the credits (1,200.00), so the journal balances. Sales Scribe will not record an unbalanced journal — this is one of the safeguards that keeps your books correct.
Accrual basis
Sales Scribe records income and costs when the invoice is issued or posted, not when the money moves. This is the accrual basis of accounting, and it is why your Profit and Loss reflects sales you have made even before you have been paid for them. Cash-based figures — what has actually been received or paid — are shown separately in the Payments by Customer and Payments by Supplier reports.
Reversals, not deletions
Once a transaction is in the ledger it is never quietly removed. If you void a document, Sales Scribe records a second, opposite journal that cancels the first. Both remain in the record. This gives you a complete and auditable history: you can always see what was recorded and what was later reversed.
Where to see it
Most people never need to look at the raw ledger — the reports, customer statements and account balances present the same information in a more useful form. Every material change is also recorded in your activity and audit history.