Chapter 5
Booking It: The Process behind Financial Accounting
In This Chapter
Defining bookkeeping
Bonding with the fundamental accounting equation
Becoming familiar with journals and the general ledger
Writing journal entries
Balancing the books
In this chapter, I discuss the nuts and bolts of collecting, sorting through, and entering accounting data into business accounting software. Accountants call the process of recording accounting transactions booking.
Some booking tasks involve basic data entry done by clerks. Others, like preparing journal entries, are mostly done by junior accountants or bookkeepers. What are journal entries? They’re the accountant’s way to enter transactions into the accounting system. (For example, the accountant records any bank charges shown on the company’s monthly bank statement.) I discuss journal entries in detail later in this chapter.
Will you need to book journal entries during your accounting career? That depends. If you work for a small company ...
