A general ledger is the record that holds every account related to your business's assets, liabilities, owner's equity, revenue, and expenses. In any accounting system, it's the central repository everything else feeds into — accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and more.

The list of account names is your chart of accounts. Pulling the balance of each one produces a trial balance, which exists to confirm one thing before financial statements are prepared: that total debits equal total credits.

A well-kept general ledger usually breaks into seven main categories — assets, liabilities, owner's equity, revenue, expenses, gains, and losses — each of which can be further divided into sub-ledgers for things like cash, receivables, or payables.

It sounds simple in principle. In practice, keeping it accurate as a business grows is exactly the kind of ongoing work we take off your plate.