The day book

What it is

A day book — the rojmel, the roznāmcha — lists every transaction of a day or a date range in sequence: sales, purchases, receipts, payments, journals, contras, credit and debit notes. Not summarised, not grouped. Just what happened.

Why it is the first place to look

Almost every "the figure is wrong" question is answered here. A customer's balance is ₹5,000 more than he says; the day book for that week shows the receipt entered twice. Today's cash does not tally; the day book shows the payment recorded but never made.

A summary report tells you a total is wrong. The day book tells you which entry made it wrong, which is the only fact you can act on.

Day book, cash book, ledger

• The day book is everything, in time order.
• The cash book is only the entries that touched cash, in time order, with a running balance. It is what you check the cash box against at closing.
• A ledger is one account across all time — every entry that touched Sharma Traders, oldest to newest, with his balance after each.

Same entries, three views. The day book asks "what happened", the cash book asks "does the drawer agree", the ledger asks "what does this party owe".

Closing the day

The end-of-day routine that catches most mistakes while they are still cheap to fix:

• Count the cash. Compare it with the cash book closing balance.
• Read the day book top to bottom. A wrong entry usually looks wrong — the round figure, the party you did not deal with today, the sale at midnight.
• Check that every credit sale reached the right party. A bill posted to the wrong ledger is invisible in every total and surfaces months later as a dispute.

Aned Book's day book is in the Silver edition alongside the ledgers. On Basic the nearest thing is the sales and receipts register, which answers the billing question but not the ledger one.

Which edition. Accounting — ledgers, vouchers, trial balance, profit & loss and balance sheet — is in Silver. Basic is billing and inventory: invoices, stock, parties, outstanding and GST reports, and no ledgers. Both prices are on the pricing page.

This page explains how book-keeping works so a shopkeeper can follow what an accountant is asking for. It is not accounting or tax advice — talk to your accountant before you rely on it for a filing or a return.

Questions

Is a day book the same as a cash book?

No. The day book has every entry, including credit sales and journals. The cash book has only what touched cash, with a running balance you check the drawer against.

How far back should a day book go?

GST records are kept eight years, so in practice the whole book. Reading it is a date-range question, not a storage one.

My cash does not tally. Where do I start?

The day book for that date. Look for a payment entered but not made, a receipt entered twice, or a cash sale keyed as credit.