When managing a company, it's crucial to maintain a close eye on the business accounts and important financial data. But this can be tough, especially if you're not sure what specific factors to focus on.

Thankfully, the general ledger is the tool you need to make this task effortless. Whether a quick resume of your financial records or a deep evaluation of your company's financial health, all these tasks become way easier with the general ledger.

When creating the general ledger templates, everything will depend on the information and categories you feature. This is why it is crucial to understand what the document does and what you need to feature to reach your goals.

In this article, we will show you exactly how to do it. Look at each piece of information and the examples to generate financial statements that help your business better manage expenses and other major details.

The general ledger is a document business owners and financial managers use to record all financial transactions over time. More than just generating financial statements, these documents can be used to report changes to asset accounts and credit balances, being one of the most complete documents to track financial transactions.

It is a must-have in your business accounting system, especially if you want to ensure transparency between all business transactions and better control of your company’s performance. What your general ledger does and how it performs will directly depend on how your template is built and which pieces of information you feature in its structure.

This is why it is essential to understand what you want to achieve with this document before you start writing it. The more information you feature, the more accurate financial records you’ll be able to create, so keep this in mind when planning yours.

There are several reasons why having a general ledger is vital for business financial planning and stability. First, this document generates insights regarding your company’s health and what can be done to improve the situation.

Moreover, it also provides easy access to relevant data like accounts payable values and other information. This way, you avoid making mistakes or overlooking a critical item when creating a balance sheet.

It is also a valuable document for evaluating your stakeholders and seeing how much they impact your final balance, positively or negatively. Checking how they affect your business is very important in the decision-making process and directly affects all aspects of your operations.

Moreover, with the general ledger, you have everything centralized in one document, dismissing the need to search numerous papers for the specific information you seek. This optimizes tasks and saves a lot of time that can be used for other tasks.

Another topic that might be confusing when creating these documents is the difference between asset and general ledgers. Understanding these differences is important to ensure you make the proper documentation for your company.

As we mentioned, the general ledger is a document that focuses on recording all financial transactions and other information related to business balance, etc. It includes numerous categories, going from the trial balance to the accounts receivable data.

On the other hand, the asset ledger, as the name suggests, focuses on keeping records and track of the main assets of your organization. It calculates only the Assets portion of the balance sheet and ignores all expenses related to them. This is usually done before the general ledger since it’s complementary information to it.

The same works for the accounting ledger template. It is a fragment of the general one that only focuses on accounts payable and accounts receivable information.

As we mentioned before, the general ledger can feature numerous categories depending on which information you want to have control of with the document. However, certain pieces of data should be featured in every template for a precise evolution.

Here, we will show you the essential categories to include when building yours. Look at each one to understand their importance and impact on the document.

Here are the main ones:

Account Name

It is common for businesses to have multiple accounts for numerous reasons. When creating your template, it is crucial to identify the general ledger account being tracked. 

With this, you avoid mistakes and easily identify the information you seek. Also, it makes the document look more professional in case you plan to present it to stakeholders or general investors. The identification is usually featured at the top and can be as simple as a word to differentiate it from the others.

Account Number

The account number is another identification data usually featured at the top of the template. Having this at the top is essential not only to identify the template and avoid mistakes but also to optimize certain tasks that need that piece of information.

Once you have easy access, it can be much easier just to copy and paste it if you’re using an online template. Using online formats is recommended for a series of reasons, and this is one of them.

Credit

It is also vital to create a field dedicated to your company's credit information. This credit data can include increases in liability, equity, or revenue. Moreover, it can also contain decreases in expenses. Other factors, like fewer dividends, are also registered in this part of the document.

The more credit you have registered in the accounting process, the better for your business. Make sure to double-check and ensure everything was correctly calculated and listed.

Debit

Another must-have in the account ledger is the debit. As you might expect, it is the opposite of the previous item. The debts of your general ledger accounts revolve around an increase in assets or a decrease in liabilities. 

Moreover, other information that should be considered in this field are increases in expenses and decreases in equity and revenue. The more precise your evaluation of debits gets, the easier and more accurate it will be to calculate the final balance of your financial accounts.

Balance

Like in any income statement calculation, the balance is the total credits of your business minus the debits. Calculating this is indispensable for the precise measurement of the overall financial health of all the accounts and how your business finances are performing. It is an important step, whether for big or small businesses.

When running a business, you should always aim for a positive balance. If you notice negative results in account balances, double-check the financial information registered and plan on strategies to reverse the negative results.

Accounting Period

It is also essential to specify the period in which the information was gathered. The general ledger can be annual, monthly, or even quarterly, and this must be clear so the data can be better evaluated and understood. Ensure also to identify the date of each item inserted into the template. It is usually featured on the side of the name, whether it’s a credit, debit, or anything else.

Report Date

The last item to be included is the report date. As the name implies, it is the day on which the report was created and filled. 

It is important to have this information featured in the document because the person reading the document can understand when it was created. Depending on the date, the information gathered can be outdated, and a new evaluation might be necessary for an accurate record. It is less likely to happen when using software like Microsoft Excel since it has automation tools that update every piece of information in real time.

When it comes to creating a general ledger template, there are tons of options available. From known software to specialized programs, each one has its own tools and features to help with the task.

Among all the options available, we highly recommend using Microsoft Excel for this task. It not only has the best features in the market but is also an industry standard. This means you won’t need extra software for other business tasks.

If you don’t have a Microsoft Office activation key, you can find one at RoyalCDKeys for a considerably lower price. This way, you get access to all the tools you need and still save money.

If you don’t want to create your general ledger from scratch, there is no problem. Here are some templates you can download and edit to best fit your needs. Make sure to choose a template containing categories that fit your expectations with the document. Whether you want it to be a cash account evaluation or simple business records, having the proper fields is vital.

Here are some examples:

Template #1

General ledger template. Document that can be used for any kind and size of businesses. Features fields for a double-entry accounting system.

Get this template

Template #2

Small business ledger template. Document dedicated to small businesses that want to keep track of business transaction operations.

Get this template

Template #3

General ledger for separate accounts. Feature fields for tracking up to three different accounts at the same time and all the transactions regarding them.

Get this template

When evaluating your company's financial status, you should consider several pieces of information. Whether to understand how the company is doing or register informed decisions regarding any balance aspect, the general ledger can be the perfect tool for these tasks.

But for the document to achieve the expected results and deliver the data you want to gather, it must be carefully crafted. Everything will impact its final result, from the categories featured to the precision of the information filled.

Now that you know everything you need, it is time to start creating your general ledger template. Follow all the steps above and you’ll end up with a game-changer tool for your company.