You rarely write journal entries by hand. Every document posts its own entries at the moment it is delivered, opened, published or closed:
| When you… | LedgersLab posts… |
|---|---|
| Deliver an invoice | Dr Accounts Receivable · Cr Income · Cr Tax Payable (and, for stocked items, Dr Cost of Goods Sold · Cr Inventory). |
| Receive a payment | Dr Bank (or Undeposited Funds) · Cr Accounts Receivable. |
| Open a bill | Dr Expense or Inventory · Dr Tax · Cr Accounts Payable. |
| Make a payment | Dr Accounts Payable · Cr Bank. |
| Publish an expense | Dr Expense · Cr Bank (or the owner's account for a personal expense). |
| Categorise a bank line | Dr / Cr the chosen category against the bank account. |
| Record a transfer | Dr destination account · Cr source account. |
| Adjust stock, run depreciation, finish a work order | The corresponding inventory, depreciation or production entries. |
Every posted document has a Journal Entries tab showing exactly what was posted, and every posting carries the document type and number, so the General Ledger and Journal reports can always be traced back to the source.
Every posting also receives a journal number from the same JNL sequence a manual journal uses (Settings → Transaction numbering → Journal entries): an invoice's entry, a payment's entry, a payroll run, a categorised bank line and a hand-written journal are numbered one after another, and all of them are listed under Accounting → Journals. A document keeps its journal number when it is edited; voiding it records the entry as Reversed under the same number.
Which account plays each role — Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Tax Payable, Undeposited Funds, Exchange Gain/Loss, Inventory, Cost of Goods Sold and so on — is set once at Settings → Accounting → Default Accounts. A posting that needs an unset role stops with a message pointing you to that page; nothing is ever created silently.