A general ledger template is an account or record used to sort and store balance sheet and income statement transactions. Generally, it is the main accounting record of a company or organization. Moreover, this ledger includes information about different financial terms, like current assets, fixed assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses, profits as well as losses. A general ledger is prepared in the proper format that should have a business name stated on the top side of this ledger. Moreover, it should also include the period for which this ledger is prepared underneath business name. Every payment or receipt will be first entered in the general ledger, then used to make other financial statements. In terms of business, a general ledger may be defined as a collection of all the financial accounts of a company which are special in type and effective for the accounting procedures of an entity.
Importance of General Ledger:
A general ledger template is basically, a financial report that is generated by the company to provide in-depth details about the values of different accounts with the description of whole transactions. However, this report will be used to make up the balance sheet of particular accounts. The general ledger template is an official accounting document which is used to create the income statement of an entity as well. The vital purpose of preparing a general ledger is to record information about the financial operations of a business. In addition, it may also have a role in the accounting of companies for budget preparation. Going further, a general ledger may hold a bit of information collected by research, review of financial statements, and audit of accounts. This will act as the ultimate bookkeeping account for all the transactions undertaken by a business or entity for a specified period of time.
Advantages of a General Ledger:
A general ledger has various advantages for your company, such as, you will be able to know the changes in your account through this. It gives you an accurate record of all financial transactions during a specific period that enables management to know about the actual balances of credit and debit accounts. With the help of this ledger, a trial balance can also be prepared, which is an inevitable part of an annual report. Being a mirror of a company’s financial book, a general ledger helps a company with identifying any unusual transaction that has been made. This way, management of the business can identify and stop any fraudulent activity. Moving further, making tax payments within time becomes easy with the help of it, as a company knows their income and expenses during a specific period. Nonetheless, this general ledger may have access to properly record the information of credits and debits for all the various accounts. Evidently, this general ledger template must cover the bills, invoices, shipping orders, and other records of the diverse business dealings signed within a certain time frame.