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The Journal Entries Page
The Journal Entries Page

Learn how to read and search for journal entries (for accrual accounting).

Samantha Postlethwaite avatar
Written by Samantha Postlethwaite
Updated over a week ago

A journal entry is the record of a business transaction in your organization's accounting books, also known as your 'general ledger'.

The Journal entries page tracks the increase and decrease of balances in key ledger accounts every time a transaction occurs in SmartRec, giving your financial team access to view and export accurate accounting data in real-time.

How it Works

4. FAQ

1. Overview of the Journal Entries Page

Admins with the right permissions can view the Journal entries page in the Reports > Standard subtab, by first locating the Accrual Accounting section and then clicking on Journal entries.

Any event in SmartRec involving money generates journal entries that are categorized by transaction type (e.g., invoice, payment, credit memo, etc.) and are listed in the order they occur, from oldest to newest.

  • The Effective date shows the date and time an event took place. Click here to view the list of events that generate journal entries.

  • The Transaction column shows the event's transaction type. It can be an invoice, a credit memo, a payment, a refund, or any change in the reconciliation status.

  • The Reference column provides the transaction number and a hyperlink to the original record in the client's billing.

  • The Ledger column shows the ledger account (and type) impacted by the event.

  • The Debit column shows a balance increase in asset type accounts, or a balance decrease in revenue and/or liability type accounts.

  • The Credit column shows a balance increase in revenue and liability type accounts, or a balance decrease in asset type accounts.

  • Search by Account ID to pull up all the journal entries for a specific client or use the Filters to search entries by date or by invoice/transaction number.

  • Click the Download icon to export journal entries and/or a summary of debit and credit balances for each ledger account within the filtered date range.

💵 What are Debits and Credits?

Journal entries are created using double-entry bookkeeping, a system comprising of two equal and corresponding sides known as debit (to the left) and credit (to the right). An entry under the debit column will always have an opposite entry of equal value under the credit column.

Debits and credits are tracked across revenue, asset, and liability type ledger accounts to illustrate the impact of each transaction on your general ledger. How debits and credits affect an account's balance is based on the type of ledger account.

  • Revenue type accounts are used for income or value your business earns (e.g., product sales, cancellation fees, membership dues). The ledger codes you assign to your services are 'revenue' accounts.

  • Asset type accounts are used for amounts that add value to your business (e.g., cash, accounts receivable). SmartRec uses system asset accounts.

  • Liability type accounts are used for amounts that your business owes or will owe (e.g., sales tax, credits due, deferred revenue). SmartRec uses system liability accounts.

Click here to see the revenue, asset and liability accounts used in SmartRec.


2. How to Read Journal Entries

Each time an event occurs in SmartRec, at least 2 journal entries are generated to show money/value moving from one ledger account (debit) to another (credit).

Journal entries can't be deleted or modified. Any change in invoicing, payments, reconciliations and/or activity schedules will generate new journal entries to reflect adjustments to the appropriate ledger account(s).

Below are journal entries following a purchase, payment, and reconciliation.

🔹 A client buys a drop-in occurring that day which generates 4 journal entries

Effective date: when the event occurred Reference: Invoice transaction number

1 ) $23 is owed to you, which creates a debit to accounts receivable. This value must be equally credited in the appropriate ledger account(s).

2) $1 is tax to the government and is credited to a tax liability account.

3) $2 is tax to the government and is credited to a tax liability account.

4) $20 is recognized since the drop-in occurs that day. It creates a credit in the AfterSchool Activities 2021 revenue account assigned to the drop-in.

🔸 The client makes a payment which generates 2 journal entries

Effective date: when the event occurred Reference: Payment transaction number

1 ) $23 is debited to the cash account once you receive the payment.

2) $23 is credited to the account deposit account until it is reconciled.

📗 The payment is reconciled to the invoice which generates 2 journal entries

Effective date: when the event occurred Reference: Invoice transaction number

1 ) $23 is debited from the account deposit account, representing money the client gave you that wasn't reconciled to an invoice (i.e., an unpaid invoice).

2) $23 is then credited to the accounts receivable account.

📆 What does it mean when revenue is deferred?

Journal entries track deferred revenue, which is money that is only recognized as revenue once a service has been fully rendered, rather than when it was sold. If the service is delivered over time (e.g., an activity with multiple occurrences), a portion of the revenue is recognized in the appropriate revenue account after each occurrence.

🔹 A client buys a drop-in for a later date which generates 4 journal entries

Effective date: when the event occurred Reference: Invoice transaction number

1 ) $23 is owed to you which creates a debit in accounts receivable.

2) $1 is tax to the government and is credited to a tax liability account.

3) $2 is tax to the government and is credited to a tax liability account.

4) $20 is credited to deferred revenues since the drop-in hasn't yet occurred.

Once the class does occur (event), new journal entries are generated to show the money being moved to the appropriate revenue account:

🔹The drop-in occurs which generates 2 journal entries

Effective date: when the event occurred Reference: Invoice transaction number

1 ) $20.00 is debited from the deferred revenues account.

2) $20.00 is recognized since the drop-in occurred. It is credited to the AfterSchool Activities 2021 revenue account assigned to the drop-in (when it was configured).


3. How to Search for Journal Entries

Since multiple events in SmartRec can occur simultaneously, journal entries for a specific client or series of transactions are not necessarily listed closely together.

To search for journal entries, you can use the client's account ID number and/or the transaction ID found in the client's billing. Pay attention to the date range in your filters. A transaction's effective date must fall within the selected date range. If not, you won't see the journal entries.

👉 Reconciliation journal entries appear when searching for a related invoice, payment, cancellation and/or credit memo that has been reconciled/unreconciled.

📄 Journal Entry Reports

You can export a selection of journal entries by clicking on the export icon on the top right of the screen.

  • Journal entries: exports the list as shown on the journal entries page.

  • Summary of transactions: provides the change in balances for each ledger account over the selected date range.

You may also gain insight from these reports in the Reports tab:


4. Frequently Asked Questions

1) Which administrator permissions are required to view journal entries?

🔑 Accounting reports: Required to view the Journal entries page in the Reports tab.

🔑 Client Billing: Required to view the client's transactions in Client Billing.

2) Do journal entries track the total balances of each ledger account?

SmartRec tracks the amount of debits and credits across your revenue, asset, and liability accounts. Considering that outside factors affect your organization's general ledger, we do not track total balances, nor do we track expenses.

3) Which 'events' in SmartRec can generate journal entries?

Invoice creation

Payment

Perform/Delete Reconciliation

Invoice cancellation

Payment Cancel/Refund

Activity occurrence

New Contract version

Credit Memo (rebate)

Change Multipass passes

Change the effective date on a Subscription, Multipass or Membership

Change the expiration date on a Subscription, Multipass or Membership

Changing an activity's schedule (deferral)

4) Can I pull entries for an Invoice, Payment and Reconciliation simultaneously?

You can't search for an invoice and payment simultaneously because they don't share the same transaction number.

If you search an invoice transaction number, it pulls the journal entries for the invoice, including the reconciliation entry (if it exists). If you search by payment transaction number, it pulls the journal entries for the payment, including the reconciliation entry (if it exists).

Try filtering journal entries using the account ID. When limiting journal entries to a single client account, you're more likely to see invoice, payment and reconciliation entries listed closely together.

5) What happens if a payment fails? Are there any journal entries?

Journal entries are created when a payment is successful. If a payment fails and cannot be processed, there is nothing to record.

You can track failed payments in the Payment Action Center, or check out the Installment and eCheck status reports available in the Reports tab, under the Payments section.

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6) Why aren't my payment entries going to accounts receivable?

When a payment is successful, journal entries are created to reflect the payment 'event'. However, those journal entries don't take into account what is being paid, only that a payment is received. Payment journal entries are always debited to the cash (asset) account and credited to the account deposit (liability) account.

It's only upon reconciling the payment with the invoice that SmartRec knows what the payment is being applied to. Thus, the reconciliation journal entries will show the money being credited to accounts receivable.

Let's review the Payment and Reconciliation journal entries after a client buys and pays for an activity and some merchandise.

🔸 Payment 50720800 generates 2 journal entries

▪️ $511.50 is debited to the cash account, which is always debited when a payment is recorded. It must then be equally credited to the proper ledger account(s).

▪️ $511.50 is moved to the account deposit account.

✒️ Reconciliation 10977597 generates 3 journal entries

▪️ $511.50 is debited from the account deposit account. Now that we know which invoice is being paid, we can credit the value to the appropriate account(s).

▪️ $500.00 is credited to the accounts receivable (for the activity)

▪️ $11.50 is credited the accounts receivable (for the merchandise).

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