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The General Ledger is the central record of every financial transaction in DualEntry. All posting activity such as bills, invoices, payments, and journal entries ultimately posts here as debits and credits against your chart of accounts. This section covers how to structure the ledger and record entries.

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How the ledger fits together

DualEntry’s General Ledger has two core components. The chart of accounts defines the structure: what accounts exist, how they’re numbered, and what type of balance each one carries. Posting transactions write to the ledger. On top of these, statistical accounts let you track non-monetary quantities like headcount or square footage, and allocation journals use those quantities, or a fixed percentage, to distribute a source pool of activity across target accounts and dimensions on a recurring schedule. Accrual templates sit next to Journal Entries under Transactions. You define a repeating accrual once and run it each period. Each run posts a journal entry from the template and links it back to the accrual. Transactions that post to the General Ledger include (but are not limited to) journal entries, bank transfers, invoices, bills, customer payments, vendor payments, cash sales, and direct expenses. They also include customer credits, vendor credits, customer prepayments, vendor prepayments, customer prepayment applications, vendor prepayment applications, amortization, depreciation, and revenue recognition entries. Operational records such as sales orders, purchase orders, and contracts are non-posting. They live in their sub-ledgers as commitments and only affect the GL when they convert into a posting transaction. A purchase order becomes a bill, a sales order becomes an invoice, and a contract releases a milestone. When you post a vendor bill, for example, the bill itself impacts the General Ledger (debiting expense and crediting accounts payable) without creating a separate journal entry. The General Ledger is the single source of truth that ties sub-ledger detail to your financial statements.

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Multi-entity ledgers

If you operate multiple legal entities, each company maintains its own ledger while sharing a common chart of accounts structure: the same account numbers and types apply everywhere, but balances stay separate per company. Intercompany journal entries are the exception, letting you record a single transaction that spans two or more entities and balances in aggregate rather than within one company alone. DualEntry posts the offsetting intercompany receivable and payable automatically on each entity’s books; eliminations then happen during consolidation rather than through a manual entry you maintain yourself.

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Multi-currency entries

For organizations that transact in multiple currencies, journal entries support a currency and exchange_rate field at the header level, so an entry can post in a currency other than the company’s base currency while still rolling up correctly. Exchange rates can be set per entry or pulled from a rate table you maintain in DualEntry. Reporting then translates these balances into a functional or reporting currency through multi-currency reporting.

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Getting started

If you’re setting up DualEntry for the first time, work through the pages in this order:
  1. Chart of Accounts: Reference for numbering ranges and account fields, then How to Create and Manage Chart of Accounts to build your structure.
  2. Your First Journal Entry to enter, post, and reverse your first transaction, then Journal Entries: Reference for every field, recurring entries, and intercompany transactions.
  3. How to Create and Run Accrual Templates when a month-end accrual repeats and you want to post it from a saved template rather than re-keying the entry.
Once the ledger is in place, move to Close Management to build your month-end close workflow, including locking periods once they’re closed, or explore AI Automation for intelligent categorization and anomaly detection on your ledger data.

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Retained earnings and year-end close

At fiscal year end, DualEntry does not post a closing journal entry that moves net income into retained earnings. Instead, retained earnings on your balance sheet is a computed value: balance-sheet reports sum prior-year income and expense activity and roll it into the retained earnings line automatically at report time, rather than maintaining it as a running account balance. Because the roll-forward is computed, your trial balance stays in balance across fiscal years without any manual closing entries. Period locking controls whether a closed period can accept further postings; it does not generate a P&L-to-retained-earnings transfer entry. If you migrated balances into DualEntry, post your historical cumulative earnings using the Retained Earnings (system) account as part of your opening trial balance. See Migrate from QuickBooks or Xero.
Last modified on October 6, 2026