How the general ledger works

Every financial event in Workcell, whether you typed it in or another module produced it, becomes one balanced journal entry. The general ledger is simply the sum of all of them. Once you see that, the rest of accounting falls into place. This primer explains the model; the how-to docs cover the clicks.

The chart of accounts

Before anything posts, you need somewhere for it to land. The chart of accounts is the list of accounts every transaction posts to: cash, accounts payable, sales revenue, materials expense, and so on. Each account has a type (asset, liability, equity, revenue, or expense) and can nest under a parent for structure. Each account carries its own running balance. The chart is the shared vocabulary the whole module speaks.

Journal entries that balance

A journal entry records one financial event as two or more lines. Each line points at an account and carries either a debit or a credit. The iron rule of double-entry is that the debits and the credits must be equal, and the total must be greater than zero. Money never appears or vanishes; it moves from one account to another. If you debit cash, something else gets credited for the same amount.

This is why Workcell will not let an unbalanced entry post. A draft entry can sit half-finished, but it cannot reach the books until it balances. That single constraint is what keeps the whole system honest.

Posting to the ledger

A draft entry has not touched the books. Posting it does. From that moment the entry's lines show in the general ledger, the full posted record of every line that has hit the books, each with its account, debit or credit amount, date, and the source it came from. The ledger is a record, not an editor: you do not change a posted line, you void the entry that created it and post a corrected one. Draft and voided entries never appear in the ledger.

The trial balance proves it

The trial balance is the snapshot that proves the books balance. It nets every posted line down to one debit or credit figure per account, as of a date you choose. Because every single entry balanced before it posted, the sum of all debit balances always equals the sum of all credit balances. If a number looks wrong, the books are not broken; you trace that account back through the ledger to the source document.

AP and AR: the two subledgers

Most postings are not typed by hand. They flow in from the work happening elsewhere, and two flows are common enough to get their own views.

Accounts payable is the money you owe vendors. Each obligation is a bill, usually created from a purchase-order receipt so quantities and prices carry over. Opening a bill posts the payable to the ledger; recording payments draws it down.

Accounts receivable is the money customers owe you. Each obligation is an invoice, raised in sales from a shipped order. Sending an invoice posts the receivable; payments draw it down.

Both are subledgers: detailed views of what is owed each way, document by document, that still post into the same general ledger. AP and AR let you work collections and payments at the document level without losing the single summed truth underneath.

Job costing ties spend back to the work

The job-costing view answers a different question: what did this production job actually cost? As a job's work orders run, it accumulates direct material, direct labor, and manufacturing overhead. Workcell rolls those costs up automatically and sets them against the estimate and the revenue the job carries, so you can read margin per job. The cost sheet is read-only; how each cost is valued and allocated is engine logic, not something you edit.

Why it is structured this way

One model, applied everywhere, is the point. Whether a transaction is a manual accrual, a vendor bill, a customer invoice, or a payment, it becomes a balanced journal entry against the chart of accounts. The ledger is the sum of every entry, the trial balance proves that sum holds, and the subledgers and job-costing view are just focused lenses on the same posted data. Trace any number far enough and you reach a balanced entry and a source document.

Ready to walk it? Start with Post a journal entry, then see where it lands in Read the general ledger and trial balance.