Grocers Inc.

USING SPECIAL JOURNALS

In non-computerised accounting systems, special journals are incorporated to reduce record keeping effort. They are designed to minimize the making of entries and postings for frequently occurring transactions experienced during some time interval. Assume, for example, that during the day there are fifty different cash sales transactions with various customers. Using solely a General Journal one would have to make fifty entries in the General Journal and fifty debit and fifty credit postings to the Cash and Sales accounts in the General Ledger, respectively. By using a Cash Receipts Journal which has by designed both a Cash-debit and a Sales-credit column the accountant only needs to record each of the transaction’s numerical amount to both of the columns and then at the end of the day (week, etc.) foot (sum over) each column and post the respective debit and credit totals to the General Ledger. This, of course, greatly reduces the number of postings needed to be made.

With the use of a cash register, cash sales entries are usually made only at the end of each day in the Cash Receipts Journal. Footing and posting the specialized column totals might then be done every week or month. See the example located in the attached file called Cash Receipts Journal Example. Note that when a specialized column is posted a tick mark (v) or some other evidence of the posting is entered below the column total. For posting amounts entered in the Other General Ledger Accounts column, each amount must be posted individually to its respective account. In this case the tick mark is placed in the Folio column. In those cases where subsidiary ledgers are employed, for example an accounts payable ledger, then the Folio column receives a tick mark for each posting made to a supplier’s subsidiary ledger account.

See also the various Suburban Grocers attached templates for special journal formats.