How to Make a General Journal Entry in QuickBooks

Short answer

To make a general journal entry in QuickBooks Online, click + New, choose Journal entry, set the date, then enter at least one account on a debit line and one on a credit line so the two columns match. Add a description, pick a customer or vendor name if the account needs one, and save. In QuickBooks Desktop the same screen is under Company, then Make General Journal Entries.

A general journal entry is the manual way to move an amount between two accounts when no invoice, bill, check or bank feed line will do the job. Accountants use them for depreciation, accruals, payroll allocations, owner equity moves and year-end adjustments. QuickBooks will not let you save one unless the debit column equals the credit column, which is the built-in guard that keeps the books balanced.

Journal entries are powerful and easy to overuse. If a transaction has a real document behind it, such as a bill you owe or a payment you received, record it as that transaction instead. Journal entries bypass the sub-ledgers, so an entry posted straight to Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable will show on the balance sheet but not attach to any vendor bill or customer invoice, which is one of the most common causes of a negative accounts payable or receivable balance.

How do I make a general journal entry in QuickBooks Online?

Open + New in the left menu and select Journal entry under the Other column. Set the journal date to the day the adjustment belongs to, not the day you are typing it. On line 1, pick the account to debit and type the amount in the Debits column. On line 2, pick the account to credit and type the same amount in the Credits column. Fill in the Description field on each line so the entry makes sense to whoever reads it next, then click Save and close.

A few fields catch people out. The Journal no. field auto-increments, and you can overwrite it with your own reference. If a line uses Accounts Receivable you must select a customer in the Name column, and if a line uses Accounts Payable you must select a vendor; QuickBooks refuses to save otherwise. If you track classes or locations, those columns appear per line and should be filled on both sides so your class reports stay balanced.

Where is the journal entry screen in QuickBooks Desktop?

In QuickBooks Desktop the screen lives under the Company menu, then Make General Journal Entries. The layout is a grid with Account, Debit, Credit, Memo, Name and Class columns, and the same balancing rule applies. Desktop adds an Adjusting Entry checkbox that flags the entry so it appears on the Adjusting Journal Entries report, which is what accountants use to separate their year-end adjustments from ordinary bookkeeping. QuickBooks Online has no equivalent checkbox, so practices usually adopt a naming convention such as prefixing the memo with ADJ instead.

Which fields does QuickBooks require on a journal entry?

QuickBooks requires a date, at least two lines, and a debit total that equals the credit total to the cent. Everything else is optional except in two cases: a line posting to Accounts Receivable needs a customer name, and a line posting to Accounts Payable needs a vendor name. Entries can have as many lines as you like, and both sides can be split across several accounts as long as the totals agree.

Field	Required	What it controls
Journal date	Yes	Which period the entry lands in, so it drives your P and L and balance sheet dates
Journal no.	Auto-filled	Your reference number; overwrite it to match a workpaper
Account (each line)	Yes	Where the amount posts in the chart of accounts
Debits and Credits	Yes, and must be equal	Direction of the amount; QuickBooks blocks the save if the columns differ
Description	No, but do it	The only explanation your future self or your accountant will see
Name	Only for AR and AP lines	Which customer or vendor sub-ledger the amount attaches to
Class or Location	Only if you track them	Segment reporting; fill both sides or class reports go out of balance

When should you use a journal entry instead of a regular transaction?

Use a journal entry when there is no cash movement and no source document that QuickBooks already models. Depreciation, accrued expenses, prepaid amortization, payroll allocations from a third-party provider, reclassifying an amount posted to the wrong account, and moving net income to owner equity are all textbook cases. Use a normal transaction, such as a bill, invoice, check, expense or deposit, whenever money actually moves or a customer or vendor document exists. That keeps the sub-ledgers, the bank register and the reconciliation intact.

There is one more rule worth following: never use a journal entry to fix a bank balance. If the register is wrong because transactions are missing, add the missing transactions rather than plugging the difference. A plugged bank balance reconciles once and then breaks every month afterwards.

Common general journal entries with debits and credits

These are the entries small business books need most often. Amounts are examples; the account names follow the default QuickBooks chart of accounts.

Situation	Debit	Credit
Monthly depreciation on equipment	Depreciation Expense	Accumulated Depreciation
Accrue an expense incurred but not yet billed	The expense account	Accrued Liabilities
Amortize one month of prepaid insurance	Insurance Expense	Prepaid Insurance
Record payroll from an outside provider	Wages Expense and Payroll Tax Expense	Bank account and Payroll Liabilities
Reclassify an expense posted to the wrong account	Correct expense account	Wrong expense account
Close net income to owner equity at year end	Retained Earnings	Owner Equity
Record a loan principal payment split from interest	Loan Payable and Interest Expense	Bank account

Several of these have a longer walkthrough of their own, including recording depreciation in QuickBooks, recording accrued expenses and a full payroll journal entry example with the exact lines a provider report gives you.

How do I make a recurring journal entry in QuickBooks Online?

Build the entry once, then click Make recurring at the bottom of the journal entry screen. Give the template a name, choose Scheduled to have QuickBooks post it automatically, Reminder to be prompted, or Unscheduled to keep it on file for manual use. Set the interval and start date, then save. Scheduled monthly templates are the right home for depreciation, prepaid amortization and standard accruals, because the amount rarely changes and the entry is easy to forget. Manage existing templates under the gear icon, then Recurring transactions.

How do I reverse or delete a journal entry in QuickBooks?

Open the entry from Reports, then the Journal report, or from the audit log, and use the Reverse button at the bottom of the screen. QuickBooks creates a mirror-image entry dated the first day of the following month, which is exactly what you want for an accrual that gets reversed and then replaced by the real bill. To remove an entry entirely, open it and choose Delete from the More menu. Deleting is recorded in the audit log, so it is traceable, but reversing is safer in a closed or reviewed period because it leaves the original trail intact.

Why does my journal entry not appear in the bank register?

It appears only if one of the lines posts to the bank account itself. A journal entry between two expense accounts, or between an expense and a liability, never touches the register because no bank line is involved. If you did post a line to the bank account and still cannot see it, check the register date range and the sort order, since a journal entry dated in a prior period sits where that date falls, not at the bottom of the list. Journal entries that hit a bank account do appear in the reconciliation window and can be cleared like any other transaction.

Why won't QuickBooks let me save my journal entry?

Almost always the debit and credit columns do not match, sometimes by a cent caused by rounding a percentage across several lines. The next most common blocker is a missing name: any line using Accounts Receivable needs a customer and any line using Accounts Payable needs a vendor. After that, check whether the date falls inside a closed period, because QuickBooks will ask for the closing password or refuse outright. Finally, a line with an account but no amount on either side will also stop the save.

Can I import journal entries into QuickBooks?

Yes, and it is worth doing once you are posting more than a handful. QuickBooks Online imports journal entries from a CSV under the gear icon, then Import data, then Journal Entries, using columns for date, journal number, account, debit, credit, description and name. The account names in your file have to match the chart of accounts exactly, which is where most failed imports come from. QuickBooks Desktop uses IIF files for the same job, and the difference between QBO and IIF import files matters here: QBO files carry bank transactions into a feed, while IIF files can carry list data and journal entries straight into Desktop.

Should I use a journal entry to fix imported bank transactions?

Usually no. If bank transactions came in wrong, the fix belongs at the transaction, not at a summary entry on top of it. Recategorize the transaction, or undo the add and redo it correctly, or remove the duplicates if a file was imported twice. A journal entry that nets the error out leaves both the wrong transaction and the correction in the register, and the reconciliation then has two lines to explain instead of none.

The one legitimate use is a reclass at period end: your bookkeeper coded a quarter of transactions to a holding account, and a single entry moves the total to the right expense accounts. That is a summary adjustment with a workpaper behind it, not a patch over a bad import.

How do I enter a whole year of transactions before making adjusting entries?

Get the real bank activity in first, then adjust. Adjusting entries assume the underlying transactions already exist, so posting depreciation and accruals onto an empty year produces a balance sheet that balances and means nothing. Bank feeds only reach back about 90 days in most cases, so for older periods you download the PDF statements and convert them into a file QuickBooks can import. Our PDF to QBO converter turns a statement into a QBO file for QuickBooks Online or an IIF file for Desktop, and there is a longer guide to recording prior year transactions once the data is in. When the trial balance is finally clean, an export of it can be turned into board-ready financial statements without rebuilding the numbers by hand.

Who can create journal entries in QuickBooks Online?

Users with Standard access that includes All access rights, plus Company admins and Accountant users, can create journal entries. Standard users limited to customers or vendors only will not see Journal entry in the + New menu. If you want a tighter control, keep journal entry rights with the admin and the accountant, since an entry can move any amount to any account without leaving an obvious trail on a customer or vendor record. The audit log records every entry, who made it and when, which is worth checking during a QuickBooks cleanup.

Getting the habit right

Two rules keep journal entries useful rather than dangerous. Write a description on every line, because six months later the amount alone tells you nothing and your accountant will bill you for the archaeology. And keep a workpaper, even a spreadsheet, for anything that repeats: the depreciation schedule, the prepaid amortization table, the payroll allocation percentages. QuickBooks stores the entry, not the reasoning, and the reasoning is what you need when the number changes.

Beyond that, keep entries for the jobs only they can do. Record what actually happened as the transaction that actually happened, get the bank data in cleanly, and reserve the journal for depreciation, accruals, reclasses and equity. Books built that way reconcile every month and survive a review, which is the whole point of the exercise. If you are starting from a stack of statements rather than a connected feed, the PDF bank statement to QuickBooks converter is the fastest way to get the year in before you adjust anything.