How the general ledger works

Wealthru keeps real double-entry books behind the scenes. Every time money moves, it records two matching sides so your books always balance.

What the general ledger is

The general ledger is the record of every money event as balanced entries. Each event records a debit on one account and a matching credit on another, for the same amount. Because the two sides always match, the totals across all accounts come out even. That is what lets an accountant trust the numbers.

Your day-to-day records (rent charges, payments, expenses) still work exactly as before. The ledger sits underneath them and is built automatically. You do not post entries by hand.

What gets recorded

• A rent charge records what a tenant owes. It debits Rent receivable and credits Rental income.
• A payment records cash coming in. It debits Cash and credits Rent receivable. A card surcharge is recorded as its own income so the Cash figure matches what actually arrived.
• A refund reverses part of a payment. It puts the balance owing back.
• An approved expense debits the right expense account and credits Cash.

The chart of accounts

The chart of accounts is the list of buckets entries post to, like Cash, Rent receivable, Rental income, and one account per expense category. The expense accounts line up with the CRA T776 lines, so your tax package and your ledger agree.

Where to find it

Open General ledger from the Money area. You can see the trial balance and the full list of transactions with a running balance. See "Reading the trial balance" for how to read it, and "Export for your accountant" to hand it off.

How the transactions list is ordered

Entries are listed most recent first, so the newest activity is at the top and Show more walks backwards through time. Use Period to look at one year and Account to follow a single account, such as Cash or Rental income.

Entries are ordered by the date each amount belongs to, so a December invoice entered in January sits with December. The Running balance column always means the same thing: the balance of that account as at that entry, counted forward from your very first posting. It does not restart when you filter, so the figure you see is a real balance from your books rather than a total of what happens to be on screen.

Two questions, not one

"Do my books add up?" and "is everything in them?" are separate. The first is almost always yes, because every entry records both sides at once. The second is the one worth checking, and the trial balance now checks it: your charges, payments, refunds, expenses, deposits, owner distributions, capital purchases and property sales are each matched against the ledger. See "Reading the trial balance".

Good to know

• You never edit a posted figure in place. A correction is recorded as a reversing entry plus a new entry, so the original is always kept. See "The audit trail" for more.
• This is tooling, not accounting advice. Have your accountant review the figures before you file.