# Introduction - Journal Entries

A journal entry posts directly to your accounts without an invoice, bill or payment behind it.

**Video coming soon:** Posting a manual journal, and why it bypasses every other check.

It is the most powerful thing in SorviAI Finance and the easiest to misuse, because it bypasses every check the ordinary documents give you.

![The Journal Entries screen listing nine entries with columns for Date, Journal #, Reference Number, Notes, Status, Total, Debit and Credit. Debit and Credit carry the same figure on every row.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/journal-entries/journal-list.png)

*Debit and Credit match on every line. An entry that does not balance cannot be posted.*

## When a journal is the right answer

Rarely. Most things that look like they need a journal actually have a proper document, and using that document gives you an audit trail, a counterparty and a tax treatment for free.

| Situation | Journal? | Better route |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Depreciation for the month | Yes | No document exists for it |
| Accruals and prepayments at period end | Yes | Adjusting entries are exactly this |
| Correcting a misposted account | Yes | When the original cannot be edited |
| Opening balances at go-live | Yes | Standard practice |
| A customer paid an invoice | No | Record a customer payment |
| A supplier billed you | No | Enter a bill |
| Writing off stock | No | Stock adjustment, which also moves quantity |
| Writing off a bad debt | Yes | No document reverses a debt you still believe was owed |

> **Warning:**
>
> **Journals bypass the subsidiary ledgers**
>
> A journal that credits receivables does not tell you which customer, so your ageing report and your accounts will disagree and nothing will explain why. Always use the customer or vendor document when one exists.

## What a journal cannot do

- It cannot move **stock quantities**. Value without units leaves your valuation and your count disagreeing.
- It cannot carry a **customer or vendor**, so it never appears in an ageing report.
- It cannot be **unbalanced**. That guardrail stays.
- It cannot post into a **closed period**, which is the other guardrail.