 Hello in this presentation we will discuss the discussion question of describe the recording and posting process. If asked an essay question such as this we are basically comparing two terms we are comparing the term of recording and posting so we could take the approach of first defining those two terms and then giving some more expansion on what those two terms do where they fit in the accounting process and how they relate to each other in other words the similarities and the differences between those two terms. Now these are a little bit different in that we're kind of we're talking about a process here so we got two terms that are related and in a similar process that process the creation of the financial statements so what we want to do is distinguish where these two fall within that process and how they are related to each other within that process. Now note first that they're kind of similar in nature recording and posting so first we want to be able to distinguish between those two things what are those two things where do they fall which goes first which goes second. The recording when we're talking about recording we're talking about the actual creation of the transaction we're actually recording the financial transaction. This means that we're actually creating the journal entry so what we're doing is we're taking that source document we're taking that information we're taking the the financial transaction information and we're recording that in typically we think of recording it into the general journal you can even call it journalizing we're basically journalizing we're recording that transaction the process of creating the journal entry uh that is being generated from some type of transaction that has happened some type of transaction being something like receiving cash or issuing a check or having a bill or an invoice or payroll or any of those type of normal type of processes that would happen within the accounting department the recording is just the process of recording that which would include a date a debit account a credit's account and making sure that the total debits equal the total credits. So recording is going to be that thing that really usually just kind of is the first thing that pops into our mind as what the accounting department is doing once we start working with the recording a lot of journal entry is because we just start thinking of debits and credits we start thinking of just recording transactions when uh when we're working on this stuff posting them is something that we often do and we never really name so it's one of those terms that people know or and they know how to do it but often don't know what it's called and posting just means that we're going to post or transfer that information that journal entry that's in the general journal to the general ledger so when we do that process we call that process posting meaning we're going to take whatever two accounts were affected and record them in the appropriate general ledger account increasing or decreasing at least two accounts related to the journal entry that has been recorded. So when we do the financial accounting by hand we typically do that and we just kind of record and we don't really oftentimes people don't know that the process of posting is something that we don't always name we don't just always say that we're going to post it now but that's that's what we're doing and we also we often even forget what the gl name is when we're first learning this we're posting this to a list of accounts people typically start with t accounts and when you start with t accounts we may you know forget the name of a of a general ledger account which is kind of a formal formal t account with more information but in essence the process of posting is taking that information from the journal entry and putting it into its related general ledger account it's a related account that will have more data involved in its its debits and credits so if we were to have an example an example would be good to to also include in an essay question like this if we were to say receive cash of a hundred dollars for work that was done then the debit would be to cash when we record it and the credit would be to revenue in terms of recording the journal entry in the general journal then we're going to take that information and post it to the general ledger and that means that the cash account would then be debited in the general ledger kind of like a t account increasing the general ledger in the debit direction by a hundred dollars and we would credit then revenue if we had earned it in the same time period as we indicated that we had revenue would then be increased when we post this account to revenue with a credit increasing revenue so that would be an example of that so once again if just to recap this if we have this essay question describe recording and posting you want to basically describe what those two are we would define it recording is the recording of the journal entry posting is posting that journal entry to the general ledger and then give some more definition in terms of what is a journal entry and and what is posting and then compare and contrast them mainly comparing and contrasting in terms of where do they fall within the process of the generation of the of the financial statements the recording happens first that's what we're going to do getting from the source document the posting is the process of taking that recorded journal entry and then transferring that data to the relevant accounts within the general ledger the relevant general ledger accounts and then adding an example in order to clarify that would always be a nice touch as well if you just make up a journal entry record it and then post it to say a t account that would be a good a good example that could be included to just make sure you demonstrate the knowledge in questions such as this