Journals
Less than to read
You would use a journal to record non-regular transactions such as the depreciation of a fixed asset or when writing off bad debt. It may also be used for something as simple as transferring balances between nominal ledger accounts.
When creating a journal, it is vital that you appreciate the principles of double-entry bookkeeping, that is that for every debit balance, there must be a corresponding credit balance. It doesn’t matter how many lines this is made up of, for example you could have a debit balance of 1000 offset by 2 credit balances of 500. This will work as long as the total balances.
Find a nominal ledger account for each journal line:
When posting journal entries, you are required to choose ledger accounts for each of the lines you are going to set. In this example we want to create a journal with 2 lines, one to set the account we are debiting, and the other to credit.
To find the ids for the appropriate ledger accounts we will need to perform a GET request which will return all relevant accounts as follows:
GET /ledger_accounts?visible_in=journals&items_per_page=200
{
"$total": 69,
"$page": 1,
"$next": null,
"$back": null,
"$itemsPerPage": 200,
"$items": [
{
"id": "be8e01824a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Current (1200)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/be8e01824a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
{
"id": "beb1cfd44a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Cash (1210)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/beb1cfd44a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
{
"id": "bf14b5304a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Assets - Cost (0001)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf14b5304a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
{
"id": "bf1586614a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Office equipment and IT - Cost (0030)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf1586614a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
{
"id": "bf15a3854a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Office equipment and IT - Accumulated Depreciation (0031)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf15a3854a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
{
"id": "bf15a6664a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Fixtures and fittings - Cost (0040)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf15a6664a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
{
"id": "bf15a9124a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Fixtures and fittings - Accumulated Depreciation (0041)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf15a9124a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
{
"id": "bf15ab254a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Motor Vehicles - Cost (0050)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf15ab254a9111e797950a57719b2edb"
},
...
]
}
It is recommended that you cache data like nominal ledger accounts as whilst they can change it is not likely that they will change often. Querying the ledger accounts a lot (potentially before every transaction) is an unnecessary use of resources.
Nominal Ledger Accounts
If the required nominal ledger account doesn’t yet exist, you will need to create it.
This can be achieved by making a POST request to:
POST /ledger_accounts
Using the minimum required fields, you can create a ledger_account with just the following:
{
"ledger_account": {
"ledger_account_type_id": "SALES",
"included_in_chart": true,
"name": "Sales Test",
"display_name": "Test account for Sales (4002)",
"nominal_code": 4002
}
}
Now that we have a list of the ledger accounts and their associated ids we can proceed to making our POST request. When adding details for the Journal you must add:
- The date of the journal – this can be retrospective, today or in the future.
- Reference – an appropriate reference you would like to use for the transaction.
- Description – an optional description of the transaction
In the journal_lines array the ledger_account_id is taken from the response above.
{
"journal": {
"date": "2018-12-10",
"reference": "TEST JOURNAL",
"description": "This is a test journal",
"total": 100,
"journal_code": null,
"journal_lines": [
{
"ledger_account_id": "bf14b5304a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"debit": 100,
"credit": 0,
"details": "Asset side",
"include_on_tax_return": true,
"tax_reconciled": true,
"cleared": true,
"bank_reconciled": true
},
{
"ledger_account_id": "bf15ab254a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"debit": 0,
"credit": 100,
"details": "Motor Vehicle Cost side",
"include_on_tax_return": true,
"tax_reconciled": true,
"cleared": true,
"bank_reconciled": true
}
],
"migrated": true
}
}
There are 4 Boolean properties to consider on each line when looking at journal_lines:
include_on_tax_return: true, - is this transaction to appear on your VAT return or not?tax_reconciled: true, - has this transaction already been included in a previous VAT return?
It’s important to understand the affect including a journal in a VAT return will have, for more information please seek out help here: How journal entries affect the VAT Return
cleared: true, - has this transaction cleared the bank account?bank_reconciled: true – has this transaction been included in a bank reconciliation?
As you would expect, each of these Boolean properties can be set to true or false.
Once the post request has been made successfully with a status 201 Created, you will receive a potentially long response back which includes a lot of detail specific to the nominal ledger accounts that were affected as a result of the POST, for example:
{
"id": "cc2211bacb094f19b50ca6b105c32936",
"displayed_as": "TEST JOURNAL",
"$path": "/journals/cc2211bacb094f19b50ca6b105c32936",
"transaction": {
"id": "0d4c85250bd74d20b29ac9e20b72c7f2",
"displayed_as": "TEST JOURNAL",
"$path": "/transactions/0d4c85250bd74d20b29ac9e20b72c7f2"
},
"transaction_type": {
"id": "JOURNAL",
"displayed_as": "Journal",
"$path": "/transaction_types/JOURNAL"
},
"created_at": "2018-12-12T19:34:22Z",
"updated_at": "2018-12-12T19:34:22Z",
"date": "2018-12-10",
"reference": "TEST JOURNAL",
"description": "This is a test journal",
"total": "100.0",
"journal_code": null,
"journal_lines": [
{
"id": "b74439499cd64904ba25b91e30ab29a5",
"ledger_account": {
"id": "bf14b5304a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Assets - Cost (0001)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf14b5304a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"created_at": "2017-06-06T08:25:49Z",
"updated_at": "2017-06-06T08:25:49Z",
"ledger_account_group": {
"id": "ASSET",
"displayed_as": "Asset"
},
"name": "Assets - Cost",
"display_name": "Assets - Cost",
"included_in_chart": true,
"nominal_code": 1,
"ledger_account_type": {
"id": "FIXED_ASSETS",
"displayed_as": "Fixed Assets",
"$path": "/ledger_account_types/FIXED_ASSETS"
},
"ledger_account_classification": null,
"tax_rate": {
"id": "GB_STANDARD",
"displayed_as": "Standard 20.00%",
"$path": "/tax_rates/GB_STANDARD"
},
"fixed_tax_rate": true,
"visible_in_banking": false,
"visible_in_expenses": true,
"visible_in_journals": true,
"visible_in_other_payments": true,
"visible_in_other_receipts": true,
"visible_in_reporting": true,
"visible_in_sales": false,
"balance_details": {
"balance": "186.7",
"credit_or_debit": "debit",
"credits": "100.0",
"debits": "286.7",
"from_date": null,
"to_date": null
},
"is_control_account": false,
"control_name": null,
"display_formatted": "0001 - Assets - Cost"
},
"details": "Asset side",
"debit": "100.0",
"credit": "0.0",
"include_on_tax_return": true,
"tax_reconciled": false,
"cleared": false,
"bank_reconciled": false
},
{
"id": "e95a01ac9ad94489a25d4aadfe3f2d39",
"ledger_account": {
"id": "bf15ab254a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"displayed_as": "Motor Vehicles - Cost (0050)",
"$path": "/ledger_accounts/bf15ab254a9111e797950a57719b2edb",
"created_at": "2017-06-06T08:25:49Z",
"updated_at": "2017-06-06T08:25:49Z",
"ledger_account_group": {
"id": "ASSET",
"displayed_as": "Asset"
},
"name": "Motor Vehicles - Cost",
"display_name": "Motor Vehicles - Cost",
"included_in_chart": true,
"nominal_code": 50,
"ledger_account_type": {
"id": "FIXED_ASSETS",
"displayed_as": "Fixed Assets",
"$path": "/ledger_account_types/FIXED_ASSETS"
},
"ledger_account_classification": null,
"tax_rate": {
"id": "GB_STANDARD",
"displayed_as": "Standard 20.00%",
"$path": "/tax_rates/GB_STANDARD"
},
"fixed_tax_rate": true,
"visible_in_banking": false,
"visible_in_expenses": false,
"visible_in_journals": true,
"visible_in_other_payments": true,
"visible_in_other_receipts": true,
"visible_in_reporting": true,
"visible_in_sales": false,
"balance_details": {
"balance": "0.0",
"credit_or_debit": "debit",
"credits": "100.0",
"debits": "100.0",
"from_date": null,
"to_date": null
},
"is_control_account": false,
"control_name": null,
"display_formatted": "0050 - Motor Vehicles - Cost"
},
"details": "Motor Vehicle Cost side",
"debit": "0.0",
"credit": "100.0",
"include_on_tax_return": true,
"tax_reconciled": false,
"cleared": false,
"bank_reconciled": false
}
],
"migrated": false
}
Edit a Journal
It is not currently possible to edit a journal or its lines using a PUT request via the API. It would therefore be recommended that a user was to delete the journal in question with a DELETE request, and re-POST a new one with the corrects/alterations made, or use the Accounting application to make amendments.
Delete a Journal
It is very straightforward to perform a DELETE request to delete a journal, all you are required to do is ensure you know the id of the journal and make a request as follows:
DELETE /journals/{id}
This will return an empty response of status 204 – No content.
Users of the French region
One difference for French users is the requirement to be able to export all audit transactions of specific types for the FEC report. You can use journal codes to categorize different transactions into a single ‘type’. For example, invoices, quick entries and receipts might be grouped as sales.
In order to find out the various Journal Code types you can perform a GET request to the /journal_code_types endpoint.
You can then add the relevant code to the journal when making your POST request.