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The General Ledger is one of the most important reports when working with our Journal Entries. The General Ledger is a master list of all of the accounts in QuickBooks and activity that has hit each account. Now, I've put a shortcut on my Toolbar to the General Ledger, but remember, you'll find that in Reports under Accountant and Taxes, General Ledger. Notice that this whole top section is dedicated to our Journals. When I open the General Ledger, I will find all of the activity for every account within my accounting system. Now, keep in mind that this will list any account that has not had any activity also. The idea is I can go through each of the entries and make sure it was appropriate for the account that I've actually gone into. Now, the Transaction Detail Report, which is also in the same section, does fundamentally the same thing. However, the difference here is it does not show me every account. It only shows me accounts where transactions have taken place. So keep in mind that even though the Transaction Detail Report looks very, very similar to the General Ledger Report, the Ledger is all accounts. Transaction Detail only accounts with activity. Each report does fundamentally the same thing. It shows us all of the entries that took place on a transaction. Now, keep in mind, most of the transactions that we're doing are through Forms. In this Form, however, you'll notice that I can go right up to the Journal. This shows me the individual Journal, giving me both of the accounts that will be affected. When I close out of the Journal and close out of the Form, I will see the corresponding entries both in Checking and further below in Accounts Payable. If I go into a Deposit, you'll notice the same thing. My Form for the Deposit, my Journal on top. Once again, showing me both of the accounts that are affected. We'll even see that our Liability Checks and Payroll will be adjusted here also. When I go into a Liability Check, if you remember, these are actually established by going to our Employees and paying our Liabilities. When you pay a Liability, it creates our check automatically, which again create our Journal in the background. In this instance, you will notice that this one transaction was broken down into individual items. When I double click on an individual item, it brings me right back to the Check so that I can see why it was chosen. In this case you'll notice that it's broken down into individual Payroll items. Everything we do in QuickBooks is going to affect the General Ledger. The General Ledger is the master listing of all our accounts and all the detail that has hit that account for a period of time. This is a wonderful way to start establishing how transactions are linked together and where they go in the background. One of the reasons that we will close our period off is so that we do not affect a past General Ledger once we've actually balanced it. Keep in mind that the goal of the General Ledger is to make sure that all our transactions are going to equal each other at the end of the period. QuickBooks is very good with arithmetic though, so at this point you don't have to worry if your math is off. QuickBooks will not allow you to store the entry unless it's in balance.