Now let us try to understand how a journal works. With the help of journal entries, we book each and every financial transaction of the organization chronically without considering how many times the same type of entry has been repeated in that particular accounting year or period.

Journal entries in any organization may vary from hundreds to millions depending upon the size and structure of the organization. With the help of a journal, each of the transactions might be recorded; however, we can conclude nothing from a journal. Let us consider the following cases. Suppose we want to know:

●      the total sale value or purchase value

●      the total of any particular income or expenses

●      the total of amount payable to any particular creditor or receivable from a debtor

In such cases, it might be a tedious job for any bookkeeper or accountant. Hence, the next step is ledger accounts.

The ledger helps us in summarizing journal entries of same nature at single place. For example, if we pass 100 times a journal entry for sale, we can create a sales account only once and post all the sales transaction in that ledger account date-wise. Hence, an unlimited number of journal entries can be summarized in a few ledger accounts. Transferring journal entries into a ledger account is called ‘posting’.