---
title: "Recording Journal Entries"
description: "When you need a manual journal entry, how to balance debits and credits, foreign-currency entries, and how the entry is reviewed, approved and posted."
url: "https://bareledger.app/guides/journals"
category: "Banking, journals & reports"
updated: "2026-10-29"
publisher: "BareLedger (Syneria Technologies OPC)"
---

# Recording Journal Entries

> Manual double-entry journals: when you need one, how to balance it, and how it gets posted.

A journal entry is the most basic building block of your books — it's how you record a transaction directly, rather than through a sales invoice or a bill. This page walks through the whole journey, start to finish.

## Step 1: Start a new entry

Go to **Journal entries** and click **New journal entry**. A form opens where you'll enter:

- **Transaction date** (defaults to today) and a short **description** of what happened.
- **Branch**, if your company tracks separate branches.
- A grid of **lines** — each line picks an account and puts an amount in either the Debit or Credit column (never both on the same line).

## Step 2: Make it balance

Keep adding lines with **Add line** until the total of everything in the Debit column equals the total in the Credit column. A small box tracks this for you live and will say **"Balanced"** in green once the two totals match — you can't move forward until they do.

## Step 3: Save it as a draft — or submit straight away

The form has two buttons: **Save as draft** and **Submit for review**. Save as draft puts the entry in the list with the status **Draft**; Submit for review asks you to confirm, then saves the entry and sends it into the approval flow in one go.

**If you spot a mistake in a draft**: at the moment, there isn't an in-app way to edit a saved draft's details — the form only creates new entries. If the details are wrong, just create the entry again with the correct information; a wrong draft never touches your books.

## Step 4: Submit it for review

If you saved as draft first, open the entry and click **Submit for review** (there's also a quick paper-plane icon for this right on the list). Once submitted, the entry locks — no more changes — and its status becomes **Submitted**.

## Step 5: Review and approval

- Someone other than you (you can never review your own entry) opens it from their review queue and clicks **Mark reviewed**. Status becomes **Reviewed**.
- An approver — a third person, neither you nor the reviewer — clicks **Approve & post**. This one click both approves the entry *and* immediately records it in your books — there's no separate "post" step. Status becomes **Posted**, and the entry gets an official number.
- If a reviewer or approver finds a problem, they can click **Reject** and must leave a comment explaining why. The entry goes back to **Draft** for you to fix (by creating it again) and resubmit.

Some companies also require a fresh 6-digit security code at the review/approval step, even if you're already logged in — if you see a code box appear, that's why.

## Undoing a posted entry

Mistakes happen even after posting. Open the posted entry, write a reason, and click **Request reversal**. This never edits or deletes the original — it creates a brand-new entry with everything flipped (debits become credits and vice versa), which cancels out the original's effect once it's posted. The original entry stays visible in your books forever, just marked **Reversed**, so there's always a full trail of what happened.

## Common mix-ups

- Trying to submit before the entry balances — the button simply won't let you until debits equal credits.
- Expecting to edit a draft in place — right now, correcting one means creating the entry again with the right details.
- Forgetting you can't review or approve your own entry, and that the reviewer can't also approve it — it takes three different people on the team.

## A journal entry you post every period

Depreciation, accruals, allocations — anything with the same lines every month or quarter. Post it once, then open it and click **Make recurring** to set up a schedule instead of retyping it; see [Recurring Transactions](https://bareledger.app/guides/recurring).