ENTERING TRANSACTIONS
Version 2025.01​
Your Journal is where you'll enter all transactions for the year.
Required Columns
Six columns are required for every transaction:
1) Date: dates are evaluated to see if the date entered is within your fiscal year (based on the date entered in Settings). If the date is not within the fiscal year, the date will be highlighted in bright red (critical warning).
2) Contact: this field is a dropdown and will only allow contacts in your Contacts sheet. Add new contacts to your Contact sheet as needed.
3) Account: a dropdown that will only allow you to choose accounts from your Accounts sheet.
4) Fund: a dropdown that will only allow you to choose funds from your Funds sheet.
5) Amount: increases to cash should be entered as positive values, decreases as negative values. Most positive values will be to a revenue account, negative values to an expense account - if reversed, the amount will be highlighted in bright yellow (alert). This alert can be ignored in some cases (refunds, accruals).
6) Status: a dropdown field with two options: Posted (cleared) or Pending (not cleared). This is to track the transaction's status with your bank account and helps you reconcile your journal to your bank account.
Optional Columns
1) Check: record check numbers here if desired.
2) NTD: This stands for "not tax deductible". If funds received are not tax deductible for the donor, select the checkmark from the dropdown for the transaction. Doing so will exclude the transaction from showing on their donor tax statement. These are often called "quid pro quo" where the donor receives something in exchange for the funds they provide, so are not tax deductible for the donor.
3) Notes: you can enter any details you like for each transaction in the notes column.
Calculated Fields
1) Journal Balance: this is the current balance of your Journal. It uses the total fund balance from your Funds sheet as the starting point for the year. It is automatically calculated whenever a new value is entered in the Amount column. This value should not be edited directly. If it is wrong, you'll need to find the error (in your Journal or Funds sheet).
Split Transactions
Split transactions are very simple. Just use as many rows as needed to allocate a single transaction across any number of accounts or funds. Use the check and notes columns to indicate that the rows are all part of the same transaction.
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Dropdown Fields
For all dropdown fields, you can click the dropdown icon to see the options listed alphabetically, or, just start typing any words (or numbers) contained in the record you are looking for. As you are typing, once the record you wish to select is in the top position of the dropdown, just click tab and the rest of the information will automatically fill the cell.
Quick Navigation
Use the tab button to quickly move through the cells, left to right - this is faster than fully relying on mouse clicks.
Inserting Rows & Sorting
If you need to add a transaction that occurred prior to the last transaction entered, you can insert a row where it chronologically fits.
Or, enter it in the next blank row and re-sort your journal by the Date column.
Or, don’t worry about how your journal is sorted. Transactions do not need to be entered or displayed chronologically in your journal. All reports will function just fine as long as the correct dates within the fiscal year are entered. It’s really up to you and your preference if you want your journal sorted chronologically.
Adding Rows
The journal comes with room to enter about 10,000 transactions for the fiscal year. This should be plenty! But, if you get to the end of your journal, you’ll see a blue “Add” button. Type the number of new rows you want to add (1000 is the default) and click Add.
Jump to End Link
Each time you open your Journal tab, it will open at the top of the Journal. As you enter more transactions during the year, it can be tedious to scroll down to the bottom to enter new transactions. The "Jump to End" link at the top will quickly link you to the bottom transaction in your Journal. To get this working, you'll need to follow these directions to setup this link in your workbook.
