12 BULLETIN 811, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The General Ledger and Accounts Receivable Ledger.— Every trans- 
action is entered in the Journal. By means of special columns in this 
book certain items of frequent recurrence are segregated at the time the 
original entries are made. The Journal, however, does not provide 
a complete segregation, since its chief function is to serve as a chrono- 
logical record of transactions. It is therefore necessary to transcribe 
or "post" the Journal entries to the Ledger, where they are classified 
completely, all items of a similar nature being assembled in an ac- 
count. The Ledger is divided for convenience into two sections, 
which are designated as the General Ledger and the Accounts Re- 
ceivable Ledger. The latter contains only local personal accounts. 
In posting from the Journal, only those items that appear in the 
General ledger and the Accounts receivable columns of the Cash 
Journal, and in the Net proceeds column of the Record of Shipments 
and Sales are posted in detail. 
The monthly footings of all columns excepting those captioned 
General ledger in the Cash Journal, and Net proceeds in the Record 
of Grain Shipments and Sales are posted to the proper accounts in 
the General Ledger. The number of postings is thus greatly re- 
duced. 
CLASSIFICATION OF GENERAL LEDGER ACCOUNTS. 
The following General Ledger accounts, with few exceptions, are 
believed to be adequate for any country elevator. It is obvious 
that all of the merchandise purchases and sales accounts will not be 
needed by every elevator, while on the other hand additional mer- 
chandise accounts will be needed by others. The operation of all 
accounts is shown in detail. 
The accounts hereafter described are so arranged that a monthly 
Income and Expense statement can be constructed with little work and 
without the necessity of closing the books. 
In opening the ledger accounts the sequence in which the accounts 
are given below should be adhered to, as this sequence will facilitate 
the making of income and expense statements and the posting. 
The scheme of numbering the accounts used herein is recommended, 
as it allows the insertion of additional accounts without breaking the 
sequence. 
In the discussions of ledger accounts which follow, the term 
" fiscal period" means the financial or other operating period as dis- 
tinguished from the calendar periods. The term " at time of opening 
the books" means the time of installing a new system of accounts. 
