Journals

A journal entry is one balanced posting to your books: a set of lines where every line debits or credits an account, and the debits equal the credits to the cent. The Journal Entries page lists every posting in your organisation, in the order the ledger recorded it — the ones your documents wrote, and the ones you wrote by hand.

Automatic entries

You almost never write journal entries yourself. Every document posts its own as you work:

• Transactions and account transfers — see Income & expenses.
• Invoices, invoice payments and credit notes — see Invoices.
• Bills and bill payments — see Bills & suppliers.
• Exchange differences on reconciled bank lines — see Multi-currency.
• Fixed assets and depreciation — see Fixed assets.
• Opening balances, VAT returns and the year-end close.

Each entry carries a badge naming its source, so you can always see what wrote it.

Viewing entries

Every entry has a sequential number, an accounting date, an optional memo, its source, and its total. Filter the list by date range or source, and click any entry to see its lines: which account each one hits, and whether it is a debit or a credit. The detail page also shows who created the entry and when it was posted.

An entry's date is its accounting date — the day it belongs to in your books, which decides which reporting period it lands in. That can differ from the moment it was recorded, and both are shown.

Manual journal entries

For an adjustment no document can express — an accrual, or a reclassification — write an entry by hand. Go to Journal Entries → New entry:

1. Pick the date. On a ledger the date is not cosmetic — it decides which period the entry lands in.
2. Add a memo describing why the entry exists.
3. Add at least two lines. Each line names an account from your chart of accounts and carries either a debit or a credit — never both. Archived accounts are not offered.
4. Watch the balance panel: the entry can only be posted once debits equal credits exactly.
5. Click Post entry. The entry is posted immediately and gets the next number in sequence.

Manual entries require write access; the read-only accountant role can view journals but not write them. See Team & roles.

Reversing an entry

Journal entries are never deleted. To undo a manual entry, open it and choose Reverse: PulseBooks posts a new entry with every debit and credit swapped, dated today rather than on the original's date — which is what keeps a locked period correctable. The original is untouched, and the two entries link to each other: the original shows "Reversed by" the new number, and the reversal shows which entry it reverses.

Only manual journal entries can be reversed from the Journals page. An entry posted by a document — an invoice, a payment, a bill — is corrected through that document instead, for example with a credit note or by reversing the payment on its own page. Reversing a document's entry behind its back would leave the document claiming one thing and the ledger another, so PulseBooks refuses it and names the record to go to.

A reversal can itself be reversed, and every step stays in the list with its links intact — the trail always reads forward.

The general ledger report

The Journals page shows postings in the order they happened. For the same information organised by account, use the General Ledger report under Reports: every account in your chart with its opening balance for the period, each entry that touched it with a running balance, and its closing balance. You can set the date range and switch between the accrual basis (income counted when invoiced) and the cash basis (income counted when paid). The General Ledger report is included on the Pro plan and above — see Reports and Plans & billing.