Link between different accounts and the journal entry

I was wondering why anything done outside of the journal entry is not automatically
accounted for in the journal entry? For example, if i receive money for a
sales invoice, shouldn’t that transaction automatically be recorded in
the journal? A solution to that would be to give the option (tick), when
paying or receiving, to include the transaction in the journal or not.

The Journal entry is a special account record or “voucher type” it can’t be mingled with other voucher types.
I however agree of the need for a “Day Book” report. One that records every transaction detailing contact, details, voucher type (journal, sales invoice, payments, receipt, Credit note, expense, etc), Reference number, Date, Amount etc . Other in built controls can have special voucher types example “Depreciation” as the voucher type for using the in built accumulated depreciation entry.
It would be nice to be able to set it to show only a specific voucher type for easy search and also set it to show transactions with a particular period eg 1/2/15 to 15/3/14.

I am not very proficient in accounting so i may have miss understood the objective of the journal, but you got my point well. Yes, it would be ideal to have a “Day Book” that can show you all the transactions in which you can alter the filtering based on your need.

@asal, I gave some some background on this in an earlier thread at Question about Sales of Inventory Items - #4 by Tut.

Since then, the ability to enter bank and cash account transactions through journal entries has been removed. Many people are fixated on long, detailed lists of transactions. But the question remains: what would you do with them? They merely duplicate ancient (literally from the days of the Italian Rennaisance) practices developed when there were no alternatives.

From a financial/accounting perspective, every transaction you record is the equivalent of a journal entry. But they are specialized versions in which decisions about which accounts to debit and credit are simplified for convenience. Many people have trouble remembering which classification of account to debit or credit for which types of transactions, leading to errors that are often very tedious to correct.

In summary, the purpose of the journal was never to provide a summary of activity. Rather, it was originally the only way to input information into an accounting system. It was always the individual account ledgers that mattered. But without modern software, the only way to make sure they balanced was to transfer information by hand from the journal.

Thanks you for the clarification. I have updated my application. i can see that the cash accounts are no longer handled in the journal entry, maybe its for the best, ill need to give it some time. But the need for this is to know what have you spent or received whether cash or bank transfer on a certain day rather than having to go over each account separately. so an other suggestion is to have a “View Only” list of all your transaction, without the ability to create a transaction within it.

Furthermore, (out of topic maybe) after i have updated the app, my Cash account is odd (i used to use only the journal entry to edit my cash account). the balance is totally messed up and i am unable to figure out where it went wrong in the calculations (i don’t remember the last balance) nor the opening balance, but i believe the error is in the opening balance given that it does not exist anymore. (i worked my balance out, but thought that you should know of this error)

Opening balances do exist. They are now accessible under Reports. Once the report is open, click on the blue figures to edit.

If you are interested in results for a single day, there are two ways to see that. Easiest is to change the period for the Summary (at the top) to run from today’s date through “Today.” The right side of the display will be the day’s performance. The other way is to create a new P&L Statement for the single day.

By the way, I’m not on the development staff. I’m just a user like yourself.

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