44: Reviewing Your General Ledger Detail Report Whether You Are Starting A Business, You Are Self-E
Are you taking the time to review your financial statements each month? Do you understand what your financial statements are telling you about your business? Most people will look at their Balance Sheet and Income Statement when they review their financial statements, but today I am going to talk about another report that you should be looking at on at least a monthly basis as well. This report is your General Ledger Detail Report. If you are using QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, FreshBooks or another computerized software system for your bookkeeping, you can quickly generate this report and make reviewing it part of your monthly financial statement review. In this episode, I am going over what this report tells you as well as why you should review it to ensure your financial statements are correct. If you do your bookkeeping manually or you use an Excel spreadsheet, I’ll also be giving some tips on what you can do to review this same type of information so that you can feel good about your financial information. Whether you are just getting ready to start your small business, you’re a solopreneur, entrepreneur, small business owner, virtual online bookkeeper or virtual assistant reviewing your General Ledger Detail Report will give you the confidence that your financial statements are accurate, and you can rely on them to make sound business decisions throughout the year. Listen in and make sure you add reviewing this report to your bookkeeping tasks each month. It doesn’t take a lot of time to review, and you might be surprised at how easy it is to spot and fix bookkeeping mistakes…
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Show Notes:
Are you taking the time to review your financial statements each month? Do you understand what your financial statements are telling you about your business? Most people will look at their Balance Sheet and Income Statement when they review their financial statements, but today I am going to talk about another report that you should be looking at on at least a monthly basis as well. This report is your General Ledger Detail Report. If you are using QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, FreshBooks or another computerized software system for your bookkeeping, you can quickly generate this report and make reviewing it part of your monthly financial statement review. In this episode, I am going over what this report tells you as well as why you should review it to ensure your financial statements are correct. If you do your bookkeeping manually or you use an Excel spreadsheet, I’ll also be giving some tips on what you can do to review this same type of information so that you can feel good about your financial information. Whether you are just getting ready to start your small business, you’re a solopreneur, entrepreneur, small business owner, virtual online bookkeeper or virtual assistant reviewing your General Ledger Detail Report will give you the confidence that your financial statements are accurate, and you can rely on them to make sound business decisions throughout the year. Listen in and make sure you add reviewing this report to your bookkeeping tasks each month. It doesn’t take a lot of time to review, and you might be surprised at how easy it is to spot and fix bookkeeping mistakes…
Welcome Back…I know keeping up on your bookkeeping can be hard. It takes time and dedication to ensure you are up to date. Believe me, you don’t want to fall behind in this area. It only makes catching up harder again, so please make sure you are doing your bookkeeping on at least a monthly basis. Today, I am going to talk about another task you should be doing on a monthly basis for your bookkeeping. I know your time is valuable and you can trust me that I wouldn’t recommend you doing something that would not be worthwhile to you or your business. Reviewing your General Ledger Detail Report can help you spot any bookkeeping mistakes quickly and you can even fix them easily on the spot while you are reviewing the report.
Whether you are using QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Wave, FreshBooks or another computerized bookkeeping software, you should be able to pull up a General Ledger Detail Report and follow the same steps I talk about in this episode, although each system may be a little different. Since I know most of you are using QuickBooks, I’ll reference that software throughout this episode.
First, let’s cover what this General Ledger Detail Report is. The General Ledger Detail Report is a report that lists all the details of each account including its beginning balance, ending balance, and all transactions that have taken place going in and out of each account during the referenced time frame. The report includes all the accounts from your chart of accounts and arranges them in the same order they are reflected on your Balance Sheet and Income Statement. When you run this report, you are able to look at all the details for each account to make sure that everything has been recorded correctly. It is important to look at the details in each and every account to ensure accuracy. Before the computerized bookkeeping systems evolved, when you were recording your bookkeeping transactions, you needed to record each transaction in a ledger or journal. This would be your general ledger and would also include other journals such as your accounts receivable and accounts payable. You could review these transaction simply by looking over the ledger or journal and you would know if everything was in the correct account. Now that we have computerized software systems for bookkeeping, it is even more important to keep reviewing this report to ensure your accounts list the correct transactions. The computerized bookkeeping systems are still utilizing the same double-entry bookkeeping systems as the manual bookkeeping systems, but many of the transactions are recorded behind the scenes. The double-entry bookkeeping system just keeps everything in balance. I could bore you with all the details about debits and credits and how your assets must equal your liabilities and equity, but I want to make sure you keep listening to this podcast, so I’ll keep it nice and simple. This report will help you to see exactly where each side of the double-entry bookkeeping entries are recorded in an easy-to-read format.
One of the reasons I believe this report is so important is because of the increased automations in recording bookkeeping transactions. When you have rules set up or you have transactions automatically posting into your bookkeeping software, you may not realize where these transactions are being recorded at the time it is recorded. By utilizing the General Ledger Detail Report, you can easily scan each account and check for accuracy.
You will want to generate your report for a specific time period. If you are doing your bookkeeping monthly, I would recommend running the report with the same dates as your financials when reviewing everything at the end of the month. Then, starting at the top of the report, you will see your assets, then your liabilities and your equity sections. Next you will see your income and expense sections. You will want to review each of the accounts to make sure each transaction that is listed is indeed in the correct account or location. Let’s take for example you have an advertising account set up in your chart of accounts. When you look over your General Ledger Detail Report, you may see that your utility payment was accidentally coded to this account. If you are viewing this report on your computer with many bookkeeping software systems, you can simply click on that transaction and go to the original transaction and change the account from advertising to the correct utilities account.
Once you have reviewed the full report and you are confident each transaction is in the correct account, you know you can rely on your financial statements for that time frame to be correct. This report is also helpful when you want to know exactly what is making up a certain amount on your Balance Sheet and Income Statement. Say for instance, you are looking at your office expense account and you feel it is higher than it should be. You can pull up your General Ledger Detail Report for that period of time to see what is making up the total amount in your office expenses. If you see a transaction that should be recorded in a different account, you can easily reclassify this account.
This report can also help you when you are creating a budget. If you are looking at your actual numbers when you are creating your new budget, you could look at the General Ledger Detail Report to see if you had any unusual transactions that you would not expect to see in this new budget time period. It would also help you to see if you need to add additional amounts for expenses that you haven’t had in the past but will incur in the future.
If you are doing your bookkeeping manually, just like I mentioned earlier about how bookkeeping was done prior to computerized bookkeeping systems, you will want to review each of your transactions that you are recording manually. If you are recording all of your transactions in a journal, ledger or even a spreadsheet, just make sure each category or account you have entered transactions into has the correct transactions. If you find an error, make sure you reclassify these transactions to the correct account.
Overall, the General Ledger Detail Report is a good report for you to review on a monthly basis as well as utilize when you feel that something may be off in your financial statements. Don’t be afraid to review this report often. Get familiar with it and you will soon be able to review it quickly each month so that you can feel confident that your financials are accurate. If you feel that you need help with your bookkeeping, let me know. When you have a bookkeeper helping you with your bookkeeping, all you need to do is to provide your bookkeeper with your bank and credit card statements as well as any other data they would need to keep your books up to date. This can all be done virtually so you don’t need to worry about them coming into your office. Most bookkeepers have their own software which can save you the cost of having to purchase the software on your own, but if you are already using an online bookkeeping system, you will need to grant them access to be able to pick up where you left off. If you are considering outsourcing your bookkeeping, it can be as affordable as $97.00 per month depending on the number of transactions you have. I want you to know that I am here for you if you ever have questions, need help with your bookkeeping or would like more information about how much it would cost to have your bookkeeping done for you. You can contact me by going to https://www.financialadventure.com/Contact-Us. I’ll also post a link where you are listening to this podcast so that you can easily contact me, and don’t forget to grab your free copy of the 5 Essentials For Stress Free Bookkeeping. This guide is helpful whether you are doing your own bookkeeping for your business, or you are doing bookkeeping for multiple businesses by covering the five essentials every business needs to do to have stress free bookkeeping. Grab your free guide by going to https://www.financialadventure.com/5essentials. And, lastly, if you are interested in joining me and thousands of other female entrepreneurs who are focused on having MORE free time, MORE margin in your finances, MORE assurance in yourself and your business decisions at the Money, Faith and Business Virtual Event, you can go to www.FinancialAdventure.com/Resources to get more details and register for the event. I’ll post this link in the show notes for you as well.
And, you know I’m going to ask…what’s at least one thing you will take away from this episode that will help your business succeed and grow your bottom line? If you need some accountability, join our PRIVATE Facebook community and post your action item, we’d love to support you.
