 Hello, in this presentation, we will discuss the general ledger. At the end of this, we will be able to define what the general ledger is, list components of the general ledger, and explain how the general ledger is used. When looking at transactions in terms of journal entries and posting those journal entries in prior presentations, we were posting those journal entries mainly to a worksheet in order to see a quick computation of the beginning balance and what is happening to that balance, posting it to a format of a trial balance, then an adjusting column, and then an adjusted trial balance. Note, however, that we typically think of the journal entries being posted to a general ledger. The general ledger can be very complex when we look at it, which is why it is often useful to not look at it when we first start posting the transactions, but to see how those transactions affect individual accounts. But when we consider the general ledger, it's not as complex as it would first seem. It just is going to be a list of accounts that will be in that familiar format, meaning it'll be in the format of accounting, I mean the accounting equation, of assets first, the green accounts, cash accounts, receivable and supplies, then liabilities, then the capital accounts, then the income statement accounts of revenue and expense accounts. The reason it's such an intimidating looking thing is because it's also going to include detail within these particular accounts. So rather than just having a trial balance and providing us with these ending balances, the ending balances, then adding up to the debits equaling the credits, we're going to show the actual detail for a particular time period in order, typically by date or order of transactions as they occur within the general journal. So all the transactions that we posted in prior transactions, whether they be to the using cash or part of the accounts receivable cycle or part of the payable cycle, part of the sale cycle or purchasing cycle, they will then be posted to the general ledger and we can think of the general ledger then being the thing that is used to construct the trial balance. So in this example, we're showing these two particular accounts that deal with cash that are then posted to the cash general ledger. We've got the cash GL, the GL often for short for general ledger, and we have the debit side and the credit side. Note that we have the cash here being debited in this journal entry being debited in this journal entry. It being listed in order by date within the cash account only showing that half of the transactions here. The other half would be in accounts receivable and accounts receivable for these two transactions and we can see that we are increasing the running balance as we go. So everything that we have posted in the general journal, remember our terminology here, we're going to have this whole sheet here is the general journal. That's what we post the journal entries into. These are going to be the journal entries. The process of recording journal entries is the process of journalizing journal entries into this general journal. Then we need to get those that information to the general ledger. We call that process posting. So when we pull this information over to the general ledger here, we call that posting from the general journal to the general ledger. So we're going to post the journal entry from the general journal to the general ledger account of cash in this example. Once we make the general ledger accounts we're going to take these ending balances. That's what we use to construct the trial balance. Note that when we consider this in terms of a test question in terms of what happens first, what happens next, what happens then. We're going to have first the journal entries, then posting to the general ledger, then the creation of the trial balance. When we consider that in a problem, oftentimes we mean we're going to post all journal entries within a month or a certain time period. We're going to record all journal entries within a month or a certain time period, then post all journal entries within a month or a certain time period, and then create the trial balance for that. But in real life and in a computer system, we're probably going to, we are going to see these happening at the same time. So note that when we go to a computer system, or if you were to set this up in Excel and not having to erase the balances all the time, then you would want this to happen simultaneously. This is also something that would happen in an automated system. This is a process that can be automated. Once we have the first data entry, we can then