Special journals (in the field of accounting) are specialized lists of financial transaction records which accountants call journal entries. In contrast to a general journal, each special journal records transactions of a specific type, such as sales or purchases. For example, when a company purchases merchandise from a vendor, and then in turn sells the merchandise to a customer, the purchase is recorded in one journal and the sale is recorded in another. Examples of special journals are the cash receipts journal, cash disbursements journal, payroll journal, purchases journal, and sales journal. General journal is also a book of prime entry that is used to record all other transactions which are not recorded in the special journals and cash book.

  • However, there are a few types of special journals that businesses commonly use.
  • Whenever a credit entry affects accounts receivable or appears in the Other column, the specific account is identified in the column named Account.
  • The Accounts Receivable control account in the general ledger is the total of all of the amounts customers owed the company.
  • Sales will require a sales journal, cash receipts journal, and accounts receivable subsidiary ledger (discussed later) journal.

However, these accounts are maintained by businesses with special accounting requirements. The first step is to categorize the special journal columns as per requirement. A special journal can be customized and formatted according to the needs of a business. What other questions can be answered through the analysis of information gathered by the accounting information system?

Definition of Special Journal

Such transactions may include adjustments for accruals and prepayments, bad debts, correction of errors, closing entries and sale and purchase of non-current assets. To overcome this problem, the journal is split into sub-journals called special journals, which are designed to record transactions of a specific nature. You can see how these journal entries (using the perpetual inventory method) would be recorded in the general ledger as by clicking fooz ball town to save space. If the transaction is of a credit nature, you will assume that the cash will be exchanged after the exchange of the good or service. At this stage, these will only be concerned with your firm acquiring stock and the selling of that stock to customers who will pay later. At the end of the month, the bookkeeper, or computer program, would total the A/R Dr and Sales Cr column and post the amount to the Accounts Receivable control account in the general ledger and the Sales account in the general ledger.

A business can save time and create useful accounting records by creating different types of special journals. Dividing accounting entries into several sub-journals or special journals how to come up with a business idea offers several benefits to a business. The posting reference would be to indicate that we had entered the amount in the accounts payable subsidiary ledger (Figure 7.29).

Special Journal Vs General Journal

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Reduction in Detailed Recording

A capital Xis placed below the Other column to indicate that the column total cannot be posted to a general ledger account. Entries in the Other column are posted individually to the general ledger accounts affected, and the account numbers are placed in the cash receipts journal’s reference column. A capital X is placed below the Other column to indicate that the column total cannot be posted to a general ledger account. Find the balance in each account in the accounts payable subsidiary ledger that follows.

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At the end of the month the total of the column is debited to Accounts Receivable and credited to Sales. Throughout the month, the individual sales invoices will be posted to each customer’s record found in the company’s subsidiary ledger for Accounts Receivable. The transactions would be posted in chronological order in the sales journal.

If possible, different individuals should record transactions in each of the special journals. Therefore, one or more individuals must record the transactions by hand in the appropriate journals. These transactions must then be posted by hand to the appropriate general and subsidiary ledgers. However, for many firms, most transactions can be recorded in special journals. For illustrative purposes, the following discussion is based on a manual accounting system.

Harold Averkamp (CPA, MBA) has worked as a university accounting instructor, accountant, and consultant for more than 25 years. Match each of the transactions in the right column with the appropriate journal from the left column. A general ledger is a summary of the chart of accounts of the general journal. These account balances are brought forward to the general ledger after validating them through the T-accounts.

The larger the business, the greater the likelihood that that business will have a large volume of transactions that need to be recorded in and processed by the company’s accounting information system. You’ve learned that each transaction is recorded in the general journal, which is a chronological listing of transactions. In other words, transactions are recorded into the general journal as they occur. While this is correct accounting methodology, it also can create a cumbersome general journal with which to work and may make finding specific pieces of information very challenging.

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