 In this discussion, we will discuss the discussion question of discuss the posting process of special journals. We see something like this in a discussion question or essay question. We may want to start off with special journals, what they are, and when they would be used. Note that if we see a term of special journals, we're typically talking about a system that possibly will be more of a manual system, more of a system we do by hand rather than an automated system with software and using journals then in order to simplify that process rather than posting every transaction to a general journal or using just forms in order to process the transaction. We can use special journals, which will simplify the process. Now the special journals are going to be something that we're going to be able to post transactions to that will be of a similar nature. So if we have transactions that are going to be similar in nature, we may be able to save time by grouping them all into some type of special journal and then we're going to add those information up at the end of the time period, whether that be the day, the week or the month and then post that information to the general journal. So that's really where the difference is going to be when we talk about posting process of the special journals. We have kind of an extra step that we might first learn in accounting theory classes because we first think about everything being done with general journal entries. And then we can modify that system. In this case, we're still using the same debit and credit thought process but trying to simplify the process less in the data input time by using special journals in this format. So we could go through and kind of list out the types of special journals for some more detail here. The special journals typically would be something like a sales journal and those are going to be things that we make sales on account. So it's really kind of a sales and accounts receivable journal, meaning if we make a sale and we would increase accounts receivable and increase sales or revenue, that's the one that would go there. Not if we got cash for a sale, then it would go into another journal, which would be a cash receipts journal. And the cash receipts journal would group all similar transactions, all transactions dealing with the receipt of cash. So that would be the cash receipts journal. And then we could have the cash payments journal. That's going to be everything that is grouped similarly when we pay cash and we can group those transactions in a similar fashion in a cash payment journal. And then a purchases journal is another typical type of special journal we can use when we make purchases on account. And it may be better called kind of a accounts payable type journal. And the goal here is to group transactions into these journals, which will be faster than recording a debit and credit for every transaction and then posting that debit and credit each time to the general ledger and then creating the financial statements from that. It would be faster for us to just list this information that are similar transactions into these special journals rather than post them to the general journal and not post them to the controlling accounts, the general ledger accounts, but just sum them up throughout the time period with the goal and the intention of then making one journal entry as the end of the time period to the general journal representing all of the activity that had happened during the time period, the day, the month or the week and thereby shortening the process up quite a bit. Now it's important to note that we do if we're talking about something like accounts receivable and accounts payable. We may still be recording this information as we go to accounts that will be by account subsidiary ledgers for accounts receivable and accounts payable, recording those transactions both in the special journal, sales journal and purchases journal, and to the accounts receivable and accounts payable, subsidiary ledgers which are grouped by customer and by vendor respectively. But we won't be posting this information as we go through the special journal to the general journal, the controlling account until the end of the time period, end of the day, week, month. At the end of the month, then we'll sum up all the special journals and we'll make one journal entry for each special journal and special journal, one journal entry for the sales journal, a debuting accounts receivable, a crediting sales for all the sales that are made and if it was inventory, debuting costs a good sold and crediting inventory. We'll make one journal entry for all the cash receipts meaning debuting the cash and crediting all the things that we purchased during that time period could be a longer journal entry for the cash receipts journal to the general journal. We'll make one journal entry for the cash payment journal which would be a credit to cash and a debit to all the things that we paid cash for. The cash receipts journal would be obviously a debit to cash and a credit to all the things we got cash from which probably would be like accounts payable, we got paid on account or possibly we made sales for cash and then any other receipts we would have. The cash payment journal is going to be a credit to cash and then it's going to be all the other things that we spent cash on and that could be a long list of stuff so that one might be a longer journal. Those two cash journals are probably more complex journals and then they purchase this journal we'll make one journal entry for the entire day, week or month to the general journal for purchases which would typically be possibly inventory that we would purchase debit to inventory and a credit to the accounts payable for the entire time's worth of transactions. Once we have those into the general journal for the entire month we would then post those to the general ledger so note what happens here then the general ledger the controlling accounts then I don't show all the detail for the month it only it's only going to show the if we're doing this monthly it's only going to show the information one number representing what happened for the entire month if we want to see the detail we would have to then go to the special journals to see more detail of what's going on during the month. Once posted to the general ledger the general ledger should then match the total in the subsidiary ledgers when we're talking about accounts receivable and accounts payable and we can then use the general ledger to create the trial balance and to create of course the financial statements.