The General Journal is used to enter the general transactions and corrections, or adjustments, you would not normally enter in the Sales Journal, Purchase Journal, Receipts Journal, Payments Journal.

The General Journal is used to enter and post (update) non-regular transactions to the General Journal, such as:

• To Take-on your Opening Balances for General Ledger accounts, Debtor accounts and Creditor accounts.
• To correct errors in posting (accounts have been debited or credited incorrectly or with incorrect amounts, etc.)
• To enter transactions for depreciation of fixed assets.
• To write-off bad debts and make provision for doubtful debts.
• To do year-end adjustments for the accrual-based accounting.
• To enter salaries and wages from payroll reports from other payroll systems, etc.

- You may create or add any other Batch Type or Journal Type in the Setup→System Parameters→Batch Type menu option to suit your specific requirements. You may create up to 256 Batch Types.

To Enter General Journal Transactions:

1. Click on the Batch Entry icon, or click on the Input→Batch Entry menu option.
   - Keyboard Access: Press the F2 key on your keyboard. Alternatively, press the Alt+I+B keys on your keyboard.
   The Batch Type Selection screen will be displayed.
2. Select the General Journal Batch Type.
3. Click on the Open button. The Batch Entry Transactions screen for the General Journal is displayed:
   
   -If no contra account, or a different contra account than the contra account you wish to use, is displayed on the Batch Type Selection screen, you need to set up the options for the batch. If you have not yet set up the General Journal, or if your requirements should change, click on the F10: Setup icon, or press the F10 key on your keyboard.
   - Note that for General Journal, the Amount Entry field could be set to debit, credit or allow both, depending on your requirements.
   
   
4. Enter and / or select the following:
   1. Reference number - Enter the applicable reference number.
   2. Date - Enter or select the date of the transaction.
   3. Description - Enter a brief description for the transaction.
      - You need to enter a sensible description to describe the nature of the transaction.
      
      
   4. Account - Select the applicable account to which you need to allocate the debit or the credit transaction.
   5. Tax Account - Select the applicable Input Tax or Output Account for the transaction, if applicable.
      - This is only applicable if Input VAT/GST/Sales Tax is allowed on a transaction, and if you are registered as a VAT/GST/Sales Tax Vendor. If no VAT/GST/Sales Tax is applicable to the transaction, select the No Tax code.
      
      - Since no Tax is applicable to these transactions, you may select to hide the tax column, Exclusive and Inclusive icons, as well as the lookup facility in the Setup Options for the General Journal, as in this example.
      
      
   6. Amount - Enter the amount of the transaction (Inclusive or Exclusive of VAT/GST/Sales Tax, if applicable).
5. After entering the transactions in the General Journal, the transactions will be displayed as follows:
   
   - You may enter transactions in a batch daily, and only post at the end of the month. Exiting or closing the batch, or even TurboCASH, will not cause these transactions to be lost. You may also choose to post after every entry.
   
   
6. Click on the F5: Balance icon, or press the F5 key on your keyboard, to create balancing transactions for the transactions entered in the batch.
   - It is not necessary to balance the batch if you have entered debit transactions for the same amount as for credit transactions, the net total of all transactions (debits minus credits) and the reference total for the entire batch (journal) should be zero.
   TurboCASH will generate balancing entries to the selected contra accounts and the Input VAT/GST/Sales Tax or Output VAT/GST/Sales Tax Accounts(if a Tax Code was selected for a transaction).
   - If the Consolidate Balancing option is selected in the Setup Options for this batch, the description for the balancing entries or transactions, will be displayed as “BALANCING ENTRY General Jnl”.
   
   - It is a good idea to over type this description, as it is not very meaningful to an outside auditor or accountant. If you over type these, it will definitely make it easier to trace and reconcile transactions.
   
   
   • Over type the descriptions with your own in the description column.
   • Over type the VAT/GST/Sales Tax description with your own in the description column.
   • Do not over type the eight asterisks in the description column, as this indicates that these are contra transactions.
7. Click on the F9: Process icon, or press the F9 key on your keyboard, to change the alias (batch name).
   - This will help you if you wish to identify a specific batch to generate a batch type report, or if you wish to export posted batches to a file.
   
   
8. Click on the F8: List icon, or press the F8 key on your keyboard, to list the batch.
   - It is a good idea to list the batch, and check the entries on the batch thoroughly. If there are any errors, you may edit the batch, before posting the batch.
   
   
9. Click on the F6: Post icon, or press the F6 key on your keyboard, to post (update) the batch to the ledger.