Ledgers are accumulations of records kept for each item that appears in a balance sheet. There are several types of ledgers that may be used within an organization's financial system:

• General Ledger
• Sub Ledgers
• Multi-Company General Ledger

General Ledger

The general ledger (GL) is a formal ledger containing all the financial statement accounts of a business. It contains offsetting debit and credit accounts, the totals of which are proved by a trial balance. The general ledger is the central data store of account level financial -information.

Sub Ledgers

Sub ledgers, also known as Journals, generally reflect the detail of transactions that post to a General Ledger. They are defined by the following characteristics:

• These ledgers generally store the original transactions, including credit and debit information, and a description of each transaction. These entries are stored in chronological order.
• They exist in modules or systems separate from the General Ledger. For example, a company's order entry system is responsible for collecting and organizing data about a company's orders.
• Periodically, sub ledger transactions are summarized to the General Ledger account level and posted to the general ledger.
• Each sub ledger contains a mapping of what General Ledger accounts the transactions are to be assigned to.

In Aptify, all entities that provide transactional data to export to a General Ledger are sub ledgers to those sets of accounts.

Multi-Company General Ledger

Many general ledgers support multiple companies within an organization through the use of a specific segment or field within the account number. This Company segment is usually a balancing field, meaning that the total of all debits and credits for each company within the organization must balance. This is required since most entities are also legal reporting entities that require a separate set of financial statements. For more information on setting up a multi-entity accounting structure, see Setting Up Multi-Entity Accounting Structures.