What Is a Subledger?

Explore our schedule of upcoming webinars to find inspiration, including industry experts, strategic alliance partners, and boundary-pushing customers. World-class support so you can focus on what matters most.BlackLine provides global product support across geographies, languages, and time zones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We are here for you with industry-leading support whenever and wherever you need it.

Leapfin ingests operational data from every system – from payment service providers and order management systems to billing systems and app stores. It turns operational data into Financial Records, linking related activities to each other in a Finance Data Graph. It also maintains a link for each of those activities back to the source data. From a finance systems perspective, subledger to general ledger reconciliation becomes much easier if your repositories can provide you with both data lineage and data provenance.

How Do I Reconcile a Subledger to the General Ledger?

Mutable historical records make life a living hell for auditors, and thus for the internal teams whose work is being audited. They won’t be able to find the financial transactions that power your general ledger chart of accounts because there’s a lack of data lineage. All of a sudden, your audit bill goes through the roof and your weekend plans go out the door. Unfortunately, data mismatches cause out of balance ledger accounts frequently.

• We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
• Since not all subledger products implement Oracle Trading Community Architecture at the same time, third party identifiers can be identical.
• To understand the full story, you have to analyze the segments that power your aggregated numbers.
• Sub ledgers offer several benefits over traditional accounting ledgers.
• The following table lists the details of revenue and receivable lines of a subledger journal entry where the entered currency is the same as the ledger currency.
• A single database of transactions, known as a general ledger, is usually enough for fledgling companies and startups to keep their records organized.

Each can provide crucial details on different aspects within those areas. The accounting function processes that transaction and records it in the books. Whichever option you choose, the important thing is that each transaction is posted correctly and the accounts are balanced each month. This Jacksonville, FL bakery started out as a two-person micro business and gradually expanded. As they grew, the owners found that they needed to create sub ledgers to better understand their finances without wading through dozens of transactions in the general ledger.

High Level Definition of a Subledger Journal Entry

These additional ledgers have accounts for each individual or business that owes the company money or has a claim against the company’s assets, respectively. Select the Balance by Ledger Currency option to enable the assignment of a Ledger Currency Balancing Account. If Balance by Ledger Currency is not enabled, the Accounting Program raises an exception when a journal entry is out of balance by ledger currency. However, it does not contribute to the preparation of financial statements. On the other hand, the general ledger is a crucial accounting record. It includes a set of accounts with balances to record financial transactions.

As businesses expand, the accounting process becomes more demanding and complex. Not all transactions can be efficiently recorded—nor do they need to be—in the general ledger. Subsidiary ledgers facilitate the accounting process by segmenting or compartmentalizing the recording of transactional information. This keeps the general ledger clean and workable, without compromising the need for accuracy by maintaining detailed recording of all financial information. According to this accounting system, every transaction is represented by a journal entry in at least two different locations. Under the double-entry system, journal entries will always have a debit and a credit in the ledgers where they are recorded.

Journal Entry Category Name (JE_CATEGORY_NAME)

There are several differences between general ledgers and subledgers, mostly revolving around the fact that a subledger is a subsidiary data source to the general ledger. Each subsidiary ledger exists only as a support to the general ledger. A fixed asset subledger is used to convey details of a company’s fixed assets, such as property, equipment, vehicles, and software. For example, the entries here can reflect the asset’s original cost, any additional costs, and possibly restatement or revaluation costs. Reconciling subledgers with the general ledger would be performed in the same manner that all other transactions are reconciled. Account reconciliation refers to the process in which information in an account is confirmed to be correct and accurate.

• The general ledger is used to produce other documents that support the analyses that accountants and business managers perform.
• It also maintains a link for each of those activities back to the source data.
• These include assets, liabilities, equity, income, expenses, contra accounts, etc.
• To sustain timely performance of daily activities, banking and financial services organizations are turning to modern accounting and finance practices.
• If your business is very small, and you only have one or two vendors or customers, you can easily track your balances in your general ledger.

Transform your accounts receivable processes with intelligent AR automation that delivers value across your business. This is due to the fact that these accounts have the most transactions than any other accounts in the general ledger. When it comes to Inventory, items for that account come from the Purchases account. The Inventory account keeps track of the number of items in the warehouse. When inventory that is outdated or obsolete is written off if unsold or into Accounts Receivable when sold at a discounted rate. The sales of inventory then affect Accounts Receivable which will also affect Income.

Best Practices For Subledger Accounts

It can also reduce the amount of time you need to spend on researching and reconciling out-of-balance accounts. If your business is very small, and you only have one or two vendors or customers, you can easily track your balances in your general ledger. But once vendor or customer activity increases, you’ll need a way to track the individual transactions that make up the balance of those general ledger accounts.

A subledger is a ledger containing all of a detailed sub-set of transactions. The total of the transactions in the subledger roll up into the general ledger. For example, a subledger may contain all accounts receivable, or accounts payable, or fixed asset transactions. Depending on the type of subledger, it might contain information about transaction how much does an inground swimming pool cost dates, descriptions, and amounts billed, paid, or received. A summary-level entry is periodically recorded in the general ledger. If someone is researching information in the general ledger in an account that contains this summarized level of information, he or she must then access the subledger to review transaction-specific information.

How do you reconcile a sub-ledger to a general ledger?

It’s a document or database that contains records of all the business’ financial transactions, both in accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP). The general ledger is divided into several accounts, called master accounts or control accounts, all of which are organized via a chart of accounts. Examples of accounts you may find in a general ledger include banking, accounts receivable, accounts payable, sales, revenue, and fixed assets. You have probably looked at your general ledger a million times without thinking much about it.

BlackLine’s foundation for modern accounting creates a streamlined and automated close. We’re dedicated to delivering the most value in the shortest amount of time, equipping you to not only control close chaos, but also foster F&A excellence. Improve the prioritization of customer calls, reduce days sales outstanding, and watch productivity rise with more dynamic, accurate, and smarter collection management processes. We offer accounting software with automation to free up your time for other important projects.