General Ledger
Pick an account, see every posting and the running balance — built automatically from your journal.
Loading…
What is a general ledger?
A general ledger is the account-by-account record that sits behind your financial statements. The journal lists transactions in date order; the ledger regroups the same postings by account, so you can open Bank Account, Sales Revenue or Rent Expense and see every debit, every credit and the balance after each one. The closing balances of all the ledgers make up the trial balance, which in turn feeds the profit and loss statement and balance sheet.
In India, accountants often say ledger when they mean a single account: a party ledger for a supplier, the bank ledger, the GST ledger. Tally works the same way. When your CA/CPA prepares final accounts or checks figures for a tax audit, ledger extracts answer specific questions: why rent went up, whether a supplier's balance agrees with their statement of account, and whether the GST booked matches what was paid.
A running balance is also the quickest way to catch mistakes. A cash account that goes negative, a supplier account showing a debit balance, or an expense that doubles in one month usually means something was posted to the wrong account or on the wrong side. Spotting it in the ledger during the year is far easier than unpicking it after the books are closed.
What the general ledger tool shows
Date order
Postings are sorted by date, and entries on the same date keep the order you posted them in.
Balance on every row
Each row shows the balance after that posting, so you can see exactly when an account moved.
Wrong-side balances labelled
If an asset or expense account swings into credit, or an income or liability account into debit, the balance is labelled with the opposite side.
Closing balance card
The account's closing balance appears in large figures above the table, with its Dr or Cr side.
Every account in your chart
The dropdown lists all accounts from the Chart of Accounts tool, including ones you added yourself, sorted by code.
Readable on a phone
The ledger table scrolls sideways on small screens, so all five columns stay readable.
How to use the free general ledger tool
- 1Post your transactions in the Journal Entry tool first. The ledger has no entry form of its own; it reads the journal.
- 2Open the General Ledger and choose an account from the dropdown, listed by code and name.
- 3Read the closing balance card at the top, shown with Dr or Cr.
- 4Go through the table: date, narration, debit, credit and running balance, with the oldest posting first.
- 5Click Export CSV to download that account's ledger as a file named after its account code.
Ledger checks to do every month
- Compare the Bank Account ledger with your bank statement and reconcile any gap.
- Check Cash in Hand against the cash actually in the drawer or cash box.
- Match each large supplier balance with the supplier's own statement.
- Look for asset or expense accounts showing a Cr balance; that usually means a posting on the wrong side.
- Check the GST Payable balance against the tax you expect to pay for the period.
- Review Miscellaneous Expense and move recurring costs to their own accounts.
Related bookkeeping tools
Frequently asked questions
From the Journal Entry tool on this site. Every posted entry appears in the ledger of each account it touches — no re-typing.
Asset and expense accounts normally carry debit (Dr) balances; liability, equity and income accounts carry credit (Cr) balances. The ledger shows the running balance on the account's normal side.
Yes — export any account's ledger as CSV with dates, narrations, debits, credits and the running balance.
The journal records each transaction once, in date order, with all its debit and credit lines together. The ledger takes those same lines and sorts them by account, adding a running balance. Here you write only in the Journal Entry tool; the ledger is read-only and built from it, so the two can never disagree.
There is no separate opening balance field. Post one journal entry dated the first day of your financial year, or the day you start using the tool: debit each asset account with its opening balance, credit each liability account with its balance, and put the difference to Owner's Capital so the entry balances. Each account's ledger then starts from that figure.
Not inside the tool. It shows every posting to the chosen account from the first entry onward. To look at one month, export the ledger as CSV and filter the Date column in Excel or Google Sheets. The running balance on each row is still correct, because it is calculated from the start of the journal.
It means more has been credited to the account than debited, so the balance has gone below zero. Cash cannot really be negative, so look for a missed receipt, an unrecorded sale or a payment posted twice. For the bank account, a Cr balance may be a genuine overdraft; compare it with your bank statement to be sure.