“Can you lend me a piece of journal?” Your classmate would always tell you whenever you have an activity on journalizing. The following day the same scenario would happen and you’d give another journal. Until the end of the semester your seatmate would ask for a piece of journal. Can there be an end to this?
In the real world of accounting, if you are assigned in the accounting department, you really have to do a lot of journal entries per day, most especially in merchandizing and service type of business which have a lot of transactions during the day. If ever you get bored on doing journal entries, you should think twice and look on the brighter side of it.
So let’s review the parts of the journal. We have the date, the account titles and explanation, the posting reference, the debit column and the credit column. Once we have plotted the parts on the journal we are now ready in journalizing.
It will take time for you to master journalizing. You need to use sort of techniques to be expert on this:
The first technique, read the transaction carefully. Don’t go hastily to the other transactions of the problem. Using the list of accounts to be used, determine what accounts are going to be affected by the transaction. Encircle the amount/s given on the transaction, underline the credit terms if any, to make sure that every detail that you’ll record will be correct and accurate. Have a positive attitude that you’ll finish the entire problem.
The next technique, determine the nature and the classification of the accounts affected by the transaction. You should at least be aware whether an account is an asset, liability, equity, revenue or expense account. Ensure that you know very well the nature of the accounts. (You may review the topic on T-Account to easily remember the nature of the accounts as to the rules on debit or credit.)
The last technique, after finishing the journal entries, review each entry based on rules of debit and credit. Compare the amounts written on the journal to the amounts written on the list of transactions. More so, check the alignment as regards to the debit and credit amounts, if they are properly aligned to the account titles. Review also your explanations.
You are now ready to submit your journal. Your accounting teacher would smile and return to you your journal and tell you to go to the next step, that is posting.
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