How to view the journal and an account's ledger

What is it for?

The Ledger shows, account by account, each journal entry that moved it, with the balance on every line. It answers the question “why does this account have this balance?”. The Journal shows the same by journal (Bank, Sales, Purchases…) and lets you check that, in each journal, debits equal credits.

Both only read posted journal entries: viewing them creates and changes nothing.

When to use it?

• To justify an account balance that the trial balance showed.
• To find the source journal entry of an amount and open it.
• To check a journal's total before month-end closing.
• Do not use them to see what is left to reconcile in the bank: for that there is the unreconciled items report.

Where to find it?

• Accounting › Review › Ledger
• Accounting › Review › Journal
• Accounting › Review › Entry search (the accounts with the number of lines of each)

All three are in the Books and trial balances group.

Before you start

• Your profile is Accountant. With it you can do every step of this article, including the PDF (tested with the Accountant profile).
• The period's journal entries are posted: drafts are only included if you tick Include drafts.
• The example is account 121 Depósitos à ordem of Empresa Demonstração, Lda, in 2026, on 03/11/2026.

How to use it

1. Open Accounting › Review › Ledger. It opens on the current fiscal year (Year, 01/01/2026 – 31/12/2026) with one line per account and the columns Line, Date, Journal, Document, Description, Partner, Debit, Credit and Balance.
2. Click More filters. To see a single account, type 121 in Accounts from and in until and tick Unfold all. The other options are From and until (dates), Include drafts, Default period, Show foreign currency, Only accounts with movements, Series, ATCUD and partner VAT, By partner, Search, Accounts by (Code or Balance), Entries (Oldest first or Newest first), Companies, Group accounts by hierarchy, Customers and suppliers, Partner categories, Show amounts in and Journals.
3. Read the account. First comes the account line with the period total, then the Opening balance (what was carried from the past) and, finally, one journal entry per line, with the running balance. In the example: Opening balance -€78,700.00, Debit €159,094.04, Credit €50,262.45 and Balance €30,131.59. The first line, OD/2026/00015 of 02/01/2026, puts €120,000.00 in debit and the balance becomes €41,300.00.
4. To see the journal entry behind a line, click Document. The journal entry opens (in the example, OD/2026/00085, with €1,800.00 in debit on 435 Equipamento administrativo and in credit on 121). Click Ledger, at the top, to go back: the filters stay as they were.
5. To see the rest of the year or another fiscal year, choose it in the period list. In 2027, account 121 shows only the Opening balance of €30,131.59 and the period total at €0.00: the 2026 closing balance carries over to the 2027 opening.
6. To save it, click Export PDF (or Export for the spreadsheet format). The PDF comes out with the company, the tax number (NIF), the period, the currency unit, the issue date and the user, and repeats the opening balance and the lines on screen (Empresa_Demonstracao_Lda_Razao_2026-01-01_2026-12-31.pdf).
7. To see the totals by journal, open Accounting › Review › Journal. Each journal has a line with its debit and credit, which are always equal, and the Total line adds them all up (in the example, €725,331.15 on each side). Open a journal with the triangle on the left to see the months and, then, the journal entries: Document, Date, Account, Partner, Description, Debit, Credit, Taxable amount and Tax amount. In the example, the Bank journal in 2026-02 has €8,222.08 on each side. At the end there is the VAT summary (all journals).
8. Entry search groups the lines by account (Journal items, Debit and Credit of each) and opens each account into its lines, with the Partner and the Journal. Use it to see how many lines an account has before opening the ledger. In More filters, Search lines looks for a text in the lines: with Empréstimo bancário, account 121 remains with 1 line of €120,000.00.

Expected result

• In the ledger, the closing balance is the opening balance plus debits minus credits: -78,700.00 + 159,094.04 - 50,262.45 = €30,131.59.
• In the journal report, each journal's debit and credit are equal, and so is the total.
• No journal entry is created or changed.

Important notes

• The opening balance comes from the past, not from the bank statements. Account 121 opens 2026 at -€78,700.00. It is not a ledger error; it is what the accounting had. In the bank reconciliation the same amount appears as an opening difference.
• Drafts change the figures. Tick Include drafts only to check; untick it before exporting for third parties.
• A wrong journal entry is not deleted from here. To correct it, reverse the journal entry.

Common problems

The account appears without lines

• Cause: the period has no movements on the account (for example, the following year) or Only accounts with movements is ticked.
• What to do: in 2027, account 121 shows only the Opening balance and the total at €0.00. Change the period or untick Only accounts with movements.

The ledger or the journal only has the Total line, at €0.00

• Cause: the chosen company has no posted journal entries. It is not an error: Entry search shows the same.
• What to do: check the company, in the top-right corner, and the period. If the journal entries are in draft, tick Include drafts to see them.