 In this discussion, we will discuss the discussion question of list types of special journals and how they are used. If we see a discussion question like this, we may first want to approach this by defining what special journals are and when they would be used and then discuss how they would be used that would be leading into the discussion of how they would be used. When we're thinking about special journals, we're typically thinking about journals that would be used in more of a manual system rather than an automated system. The goal of the special journals being to lessen the data input process throughout the time period in order to do things faster, more efficiently. The way we are going to be able to do that is to be able to rather than record a general journal for each and every transaction having a debit and credit at least one for each transaction and post each one to the controlling general ledger account. We could list similar accounts in these special type journals grouping similar accounts, accounts that are going to be similar in nature and by doing so we can have columns representing the information needed and lessen the amount of data than that would be needed to input into the special journals. We can restrict ourselves from posting each transaction to the general journal or the general ledger until the end of the time period at which time we can add up the special journals and record one transaction for the entire time period the month, the week or the day if we whatever we're doing this over typically we'll be talking about it for the month and then record just one journal entry and that will hopefully save time for the data input process. Now the types of special journals we're going to have are going to be grouped by similarities in transactions so if we think about the types of transactions that we're going to have we can have a sale on account that would if that's going to be our typical transaction we have we're going to put that in something we call the sales journal. If we have a purchase on account meaning we purchase something like inventory on account we're going to put that into something we'll call the purchases journal. If we are expending cash for giving cash or buying something with cash we can group all those transactions into something like a cash payment journal and anytime we receive cash we can group all those transactions into something like a cash receipts journal so those are going to be some of the most common type of journals we'll have we might want to get into some more detail in terms of when we would use those because the names can be a little bit deceiving for them the cash receipts and cash payments are pretty straightforward but they can still be a little complicated just in the types of transactions we have for them so if we thought if we talked about the sales journal for example you would think that anything dealing with sales would go in the sales journal but sales for cash would not go in the cash in the sales journal because we would be receiving cash at that point in time and therefore it would go into the cash receipts journal so it's going to be one of the main kind of confusions when talking about these types of journals the sales journal is really kind of like a counts receivable journal meaning we made a sale on account now if it's a service company we're talking about or if a company is on a periodic system we are just going to record one column is all we need to record a debit to the to the accounts receivable and a credit to sales or revenue if we're on a perpetual inventory system and we're a merchandising company we'll also need a column for the cost of good sold debit and the related decrease in the inventory when we talk about the purchases journal once again it is for purchases however if we were to purchase something for cash then it would go into cash payment journal if we're purchasing something on account then it goes into purchases journal also so really it's more of a counts payable journal so if we buy inventory for example then that would be our normal transaction we can record all those in the same journal and debit inventory and credit the accounts payable however if we use accounts payable for other transactions like paying expenses we may have those transactions as well in the purchases journal because it's really kind of like an accounts payable journal then the cash receipts journal it's going to be anytime we get cash now hopefully to be most effective within these journal type processes we get cash from a fairly standard type thing for example if we make sales for cash then the cash receipts journal would be very useful and we would record all those similar transactions with one column but if we have a lot of different things that happen we get cash from from sales and we have sales on accounts so we get we get cash from accounts receivable and possibly there are investments in cash from the owner anytime you know cash is is being received it could go into this journal so there are transactions that could be a little more confusing in the cash receipts journal and then the cash disbursements journal of course is when cash is being dispersed and this is probably the one that has the most types of of things that could be in it because we pay for many different types of things when running the business whereas when we receive cash we have a fairly limited things types of things at least that we're receiving cash or so the cash payment journal is best used when there's going to be very similar transactions that we're buying stuff like we're buying supplies or buying inventory or you know and it's all pretty much the same or we're buying something in the past on account we're paying it off at this time but there could be a lot of different things we pay cash for so this could be one of the larger journals and more confusing types of journals now once we have all the journals set up at the end of the time period what we will do is we'll add up the the totals in all the journals and we'll make a journal entry at the end of the time period the day the week or the month typically the month for us and that one journal entry for each of those journals will represent the activity for that entire time period that we just have to record one transaction in the general journal rather than a transaction for each each occurrence each financial transaction and then we will take that entry into the general journal post it to the general ledger the controlling accounts we'll also enter this information into the subsidiary accounts for example accounts receivable and accounts payable the accounts listing out the activity by customer or vendor respectively and then once we have everything posted to the controlling general accounts in those subsidiary accounts we will typically then create the trial balance and the financial statements from them so the goal of this of course is to save time so we're going to be putting it in the special journals in order to record less transactions typically if using more of a manual system and then only needing to record one journal entry at the end of the time period representing all of the activity happened during the time period