 In this discussion we will discuss the discussion question of describe transactions that would use a sales journal. So when thinking of a discussion question like this or an essay question like this we may first want to define what a sales journal is and when it might be used. Now a sales journal is going to be something like a special journal. It's going to be one of these special journals and the special journals will typically be used when we're having more of a manual type of accounting system as opposed to an automated type of accounting system. The special journal goal in this system being to save time or to group together transactions of a similar nature and instead of posting each transaction and recording to the general journal recording a debit and credit to each transaction and then posting it to the general ledger each time. We will just list these transactions in the journals that will be grouped in a similar nature add them up for a time period typically a day month or a year we're going to be working with a our day week or month we're typically going to be working with a month here that's going to be many of the examples will be for a month and then at the end of that time period we will record this transactions one journal entry for the entire time period at the end and so that's going to be why we would use these those are going to be some different types of groupings than what types of journals do we have well we have the sales journal here we could have a purchase a journal we could have a cash receipts journal we could have a cash payments journal those can be the most common journals now a sales journal is going to be dealing with sales sales being like a revenue or income type of transactions now the sales journal is a bit tricky because it does kind of indicate that all sales anything that we make as a sale you would think would go in the sales journal given the name sales journal but it's not the sales that really drive this because if we did make a sale for a cash it would not actually go in the sales journal but the cash receipts journal and so the sales journal really represents accounts receivable meaning sales on account increase in the receivable account so that means that if we made a sale on account they were going to sales journal it's going to be a very specific type of transaction then the sales journal being one of the most specific type of journals that we have and therefore one of the one of the easiest to kind of track and record because we can basically have one column representing both the sale that would be a credit to sale and a debit to accounts receivable and we can just list everything out in that one column now if we're talking about a service company that doesn't have inventory and what we're making sales like a you know some type of service or if we are talking about a invent a merchandising company that is on a periodic system that's all we would have is just that one column we wouldn't have the other column which we would have if we were a merchandising company on a perpetual system recording the inventory perpetually what's happening to it then if that were the case we would have to have another column that would represent a debit to cost a good sold and a credit to inventory so if we had a merchandising type of transaction again and we had the sales journal the type of transaction in it would be two columns one column for a debit to the accounts receivable and a credit to sales and the other column being a debit to cost a good sold and a credit to inventory and all that's all we would need is those are those two numbers and that's that's it and that would record the entire transaction rather than recording for type of accounts and if you know debit to credit debit to credit that we would then post each time at the end of the time period the end of the day week or month we would then post that information or added up sum up all the columns and then make a journal entry that would post all that data for the entire period one time at the end of that period in a general journal once we have the general journal will post that information to the general ledger the controlling account will also record this information as we go to the subsidiary account for accounts receivable the subsidiary account recording this information not by date but by customer so that we know who owes us money so that we can then follow up and track that once we have the information posted to the general ledger we can make the trial balance and the financial statements from it so once again the final the real goal of the sales journal is to save time in the more manual system by reducing the amount of data input that we will need by a listing transactions that will be similar in nature not posting them to the GL each time as we go but only at the end of the time period at the end of the month