Journal entries
The entry for what no document covers. Powerful, and the first place a set of books goes wrong when it is used for the wrong thing.
The entry for what no document covers. Powerful, and the first place a set of books goes wrong when it is used for the wrong thing.
Most entries come from a document: a bill, a receipt, a payment. A journal voucher is for the ones that do not, where you name both sides yourself:
Anything a document covers. If a sale was made, raise the bill; if money arrived, record the receipt. A journal that quietly increases sales leaves no invoice behind it, and the GST return built from your invoices will then not agree with your P&L. That mismatch is precisely what a scrutiny notice is about.
The same goes for stock. A journal moves value, not goods. Stock genuinely on the shelf but not in the books is a stock entry, not a journal.
When an entry was wrong, the honest fix is a correcting entry that reverses it, dated when you found it, with a narration saying what it corrects. Deleting the original leaves a gap in the sequence and nothing explaining it, and it is the first thing anybody auditing your books will ask about. It is the same argument as a credit note rather than an edited invoice.
One line saying why. "Depreciation on fittings, FY 2025-26." "Reverses JV-14, amount posted to Verma in error." In eleven months it is the only thing standing between you and re-deriving your own reasoning, and it costs five seconds now.
Journal and contra vouchers are in Aned Book Silver, alongside receipts and payments that can be posted against a ledger rather than only a party — which is what lets rent, salaries and freight be recorded at all, instead of a profit & loss whose only expense is purchases.
You can, and you should not. There would be no invoice behind it, so your GST return and your profit and loss would stop agreeing.
Reverse it with a correcting entry and a narration. A deleted entry leaves a gap in the sequence with nothing explaining it.
One line on the voucher saying why the entry exists. It is the cheapest thing in book-keeping and the one most often skipped.
Aned Book Silver posts both sides from the document you already raised, so the ledgers, trial balance, profit & loss and balance sheet are a consequence of your billing rather than a second job. Basic is billing and inventory, without the ledgers.