General Ledger
General Ledger is the link between your stores' tills and your accounting system. It takes every sale, return, payment and paid-in or paid-out that the stores record and posts it to accounts: the account numbers you choose. It adds those amounts up per store and business day, and sends the totals as a journal that your accounting system can post directly.
You decide which account each amount goes to by configuring accounting rules. General Ledger does the arithmetic, keeps every journal it has sent, and can recalculate a period when a rule turns out to be wrong.
What it handles
| Money movement in the store | Where it is posted |
|---|---|
| Sales and returns of items | a sales account, chosen by item, item category or tax group |
| VAT on those sales and returns | a tax account, chosen by tax group |
| Payments and refunds: card, cash, Amex, … | a tender account, chosen by payment method, provider or tender |
| Cash rounding | a rounding account |
| Paid-in and paid-out (money into or out of the till that is not a sale) | an income or expense account, chosen by reason code |
| Selling a gift card | a gift-card account, chosen by provider |
Every transaction is posted so that its debits equal its credits. For example, a card sale credits sales and VAT and debits the card account by the same total. So every journal balances as well. See Posting transactions to accounts.
What you get
- One journal per store per business day, sent automatically in the early hours (UTC) once the store's business day has ended. It lists each account with a debit and a credit amount.
- A correction journal whenever the day changes afterwards. If a late transaction arrives, or you recalculate the day after fixing a rule, General Ledger does not resend the whole day. It sends a new journal holding only the difference. Adding up all the journals for a day always gives the correct total.
- The option to resend. Every journal is kept, so a receiving system that missed some can be sent them again, unchanged.
If you want to…
| …then read |
|---|
| understand how a sale, a return or a payment becomes debits and credits |
| set up which account each amount goes to |
| know when journals are sent and what a later "delta" journal means |
| correct a period after a rule was wrong, or resend journals |
| look at the numbers for a store and day, or call the API |
| receive the journals in your own system |
Before a store goes live
🛑 Configure the accounting rules for a business unit before it records its first transaction. General Ledger posts a transaction the moment it arrives. A transaction that arrives for a business unit with no rules at all is not recorded, and recalculating the day later cannot bring it back. See Accounting rules.