General journal
Financial Accounting glossary · The Accounting Cycle & Financial Statements
Definition
The book of original entry where all transactions are first recorded as journal entries.
General journal in plain English
The general journal is the company's diary — the very first place every money event gets written down, in the order it happens. Each entry notes the date, which accounts go up or down, and by how much, before that information gets sorted into neat categories later. Think of it like jotting every purchase into one running list on your phone the moment it happens, so nothing gets forgotten; the tidy sorting comes afterward. Because it's the original record, accountants call it the "book of original entry."
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