Aledger[a] is a book or collection of accounts in which accountingtransactions are recorded. Each account has:
The ledger is a permanent summary of all amounts entered in supportingjournals (day books) which list individualtransactions by date. Usually every transaction, or a total of a series of transactions, flows from a journal to one or more ledgers. Depending on the company's bookkeeping procedures, all journals may be totaled and the totals posted to the relevant ledger each month. At the end of the accounting period, the company'sfinancial statements are generated from summary totals in the ledgers.[1]
Ledgers include:[2]
For everydebit recorded in a ledger, there must be a correspondingcredit, so that overall the total debits equal the total credits.
The termledger stems from the English dialect formsliggen orleggen, meaning "to lie or lay" (Dutch:liggen orleggen, German:liegen orlegen); in sense, it is adapted from the Dutch substantivelegger, properly "a book lying or remaining regularly in one place". Originally, a ledger was a large volume ofscripture or service book kept in one place in church and openly accessible. According toCharles Wriothesley'sChronicle (1538), "The curates should provide a booke of the bible in Englishe, of the largest volume, to be a ledger in the same church for the parishioners to read on."[4]
In application of this original meaning the commercial usage of the term is for the "principal book of account" in a business house.[4]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ledger".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 359.| International | |
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