Choose Between Journal Entries and Source Workflows

Use this page to choose whether an accounting event belongs in invoices, bills, checks, banking, or a manual journal entry.

Journal entries affect the ledger, but they do not manage customer invoices, vendor bills, payment history, or bank review by themselves.

Use This Page When

Review this decision before posting a manual journal entry for activity that might belong to accounts receivable, accounts payable, banking, checks, or another source workflow.

Choose This Path If

Goal Use Check First
Bill a customer Create and open invoices The invoice should carry customer balance, status, due date, revenue lines, and payment history.
Record a customer sale that is paid immediately Create and open invoices with a settlement account in Receive to The sale should settle directly instead of remaining as an open receivable.
Receive money from an existing customer invoice Receive invoice payments The payment belongs to an open invoice and should reduce the customer balance.
Enter a vendor bill Create and manage bills The bill should carry vendor balance, due date, expense lines, and payment history.
Record a vendor bill that is paid immediately Create and manage bills with a settlement account in Pay from The bill should settle directly instead of remaining as an open payable.
Pay a vendor by check Work with checks or the bill payment action The payment should stay connected to vendor, bank, and payment records.
Classify imported bank activity Review and classify bank transactions The row is waiting in Banking and should stay connected to bank review and reconciliation.
Record accruals, reclasses, owner entries, allocations, or accountant adjustments Record journal entries The event does not belong to a customer, vendor, payment, check, or bank-review workflow.
Correct an existing accounting record Common accountant corrections The original source, posting state, payment state, and audit trail are understood before choosing a correction path.

Before You Commit

  • Before posting a journal entry, confirm the real-world event you are recording.
  • Check whether a customer, vendor, bank transaction, check, invoice, bill, or payment record already exists for the event.
  • Review control-account routing before posting directly to Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable.
  • Confirm the date, amount, account, customer, vendor, and supporting document before posting, paying, reversing, or correcting.
  • If the original record should remain visible and offset, use the supported reversal or correction workflow instead of overwriting the history.

What Not To Assume

  • A journal entry does not update invoice status, bill status, customer balance detail, vendor balance detail, or payment history by itself.
  • Source workflows are not the right place for pure accountant adjustments that do not involve a customer, vendor, bank transaction, check, item, or payment record.
  • A bank statement row waiting in Banking should not be replaced with a manual journal unless you intentionally want separate ledger activity outside bank review.
  • Receive to on invoices and Pay from on bills choose the document’s posting path. They should not be recreated with a separate manual journal unless the source workflow is intentionally not being used.
  • Control accounts may be restricted from manual journal entry so AR and AP activity stays tied to source workflows.