Manual Journals

Generally, journals are used by accountants to work directly with the general ledger to create both debit and credit entries for unique financial transactions. The journal entries are recorded in chronological order. Examples of journals include Sales Journals, Purchase Journals, Cash Disbursement Journals and Cash Receipt Journals.

In Zoho Books, manual journals can be used to record unique financial transactions which cannot be recorded normally otherwise. For example, depreciation rates for a month cannot be recorded normally. In this case, a manual journal for the depreciation rate can be recorded for the particular month. In this page, you will learn about:

Recording Manual Journals

You can add manual journals to Zoho Books either by creating new journals or by importing them.

Creating a Manual Journal

To create a Manual Journal:

Creating a Manual Journal

Enter the the following details:

Fields Description
Date Date on which the adjustment needs to be made.
Reference Number The manual journal will be associated with this number.
Notes Mention a unique reason for creating the journal.
Journal Type Choose Cash based Journal to generate reports of the manual journal based only on cash transactions and not on an accrual basis.
Currency The currency in which you wish to make the journal entry (by default, it is SAR).
Account Account from which the amount is to be debited and an account to which the amount is to be credited.
Contact You can associate contacts to the journal entry.
Debit/Credit Amount that needs to be debited or credited from the selected accounts.

You can also attach files to the manual journal by clicking on the Attach Files icon. > Note: Make sure the amount debited is equal to the amount credited.

Now, the journal will be created in the Published or Draft status based on your selection.

Note: When a manual journal is created in the Draft state, the transactions in the manual journal will not reflect in their respective accounts. These transactions will reflect in their respective accounts only when the journal is published.

You can also publish manual journals in bulk by selecting multiple manual journals and then clicking the Publish button.

Importing Manual Journals

You can import manual journals by clicking the More button.

Journal Numbers

The status of your manual journals, i.e., whether they are in the Published or Draft state, will be included in the imported file.

Reports

Generally the Balance Sheet & Profit and Loss reports gets affected on recording manual journals. For more reports you can navigate to Reports > Accountant and view the General Ledger, Journal Report and Trial Balance.


Manual Journal for Bank Accounts

You can create a manual journal using the bank accounts that you’ve added in the Banking module. After you create a manual journal, the recorded transaction will be listed as a Manually Added transaction in the respective bank account as a deposit or a withdrawal.

You can also match the manually added bank transaction to an uncategorized transaction. To match:

Match manually added transaction

Learn more about matching and categorizing transactions

Exporting Manual Journals

You can export your manual journals in Zoho Books to your device in a file that can be password protected. Learn more about exporting data in Zoho Books.

The status of your manual journals, i.e., whether they are in the Published or Draft state, will be included in the exported file.

Other Actions

Edit, Download a PDF Copy, Print and Attach Files

To edit your manual journals, download them as a PDF, print them or attach files to them:

Clone or Delete Manual Journals

To clone or delete a manual journal:

Note: You can also delete your manual journals in bulk by selecting multiple manual journals and then clicking the Delete icon.

Bulk Print Journals

You can print multiple journals at once with just one click of the button. Before you bulk print journals, you must first customize a journal. Once you customize a journal, the customized template will be applied to all journals.

To bulk print a journal:

Bulk Print Journals

See Also:
Currency Adjustments
Chart of Accounts
Transaction Locking

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