General journals are used to post to general ledger, bank, customer, vendor, and fixed assets accounts.

Payment journals are based on general journal batches and are used to post payments due on purchase documents to vendor accounts. The Payment Journal window is unique in that it can be used to export payment files for processing by electronic banks. For more information, see Make Payments with Bank Data Conversion Service or SEPA Credit Transfer.

To fill in and post a general journal

  1. In the Search box, enter General Journal, and then choose the related link.

  2. Fill in the fields on the first line manually.

    Alternatively, if you process payments in the general journal, import a bank statement file to fill the lines automatically. For more information, see How to: Import Bank Statements.

  3. The Gen. Posting Type, Gen. Bus. Posting Group, and Gen. Prod. Posting Group fields, and the corresponding fields for the balancing account, are automatically filled in, but they can be changed if necessary.

  4. If you process payments, apply payments to the related open sales or purchase documents where necessary. You can apply payments automatically or manually. For more information, see How to: Reconcile Payments Using Automatic Application or Applies-to ID.

  5. After filling in the fields, post the journal. On the Home tab, in the Process group, choose Post.

When you post the journal, the lines are processed one-by-one to verify that the journal balances for each posting date. If the Force Doc. Balance field in the General Journal Templates window has been selected, the lines for each document type and document number are also verified. If you receive any error messages, correct the errors and post the journal again. After you have corrected all of the errors, the lines are posted one by one. For each account in the Account No. and Bal. Account No. fields, a general ledger entry is created, as well as a customer, vendor, or bank account ledger entry for each account of these types.

To fill in and post a payment journal

  1. In the Search box, enter Payment Journals, and then choose the related link.

  2. Fill payment journal lines, for example, by using the Suggest Vendor Payments function. For more information, see How to: Suggest Vendor Payments.

    Note
    You can select how posting dates are inserted on the journal lines. For more information, see How to: Insert Due Date as Posting Date on Payment Journal Lines.

  3. When you have completed all payment journal lines, you can choose to export the payment lines to an electronic bank file. For more information, see How to: Export Payments to a Bank File.

  4. When you are ready post the payments, on the Home tab, in the Process group, choose Post.

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