and now it's time for another tool tip this tool tip is tip number three all about the journal
report the journal report is the most helpful report in the entire quickbooks software program
it's the most helpful report for two reasons first the journal shows every transaction ever put into
the quickbooks file the other reason it's the most helpful report is because the journal is the only
report that shows the transactions in the order that they were put into QuickBooks we call this
order entered let's take a look from the main menu click reports accountant and taxes journal
the journal is only helpful to us if we change the date range to be all meaning we need the
journal to show us all transactions regardless of date once we do that we can stretch at all and we
can see every single transaction that we recorded in this QuickBooks file is listed across the rows
of this journal notice the first few transactions where invoices and here are the dates customers
and money amounts as we scroll down we can see that after we entered eight invoices we
learned about entering sales receipts and these were the next consecutive transactions that we
recorded you can see any transaction that you previously recorded by opening the journal and
simply finding the transaction and double-click so this sale receipt number six can come right
up in front of us and we can change anything we want if we scroll all the way to the bottom of
the journal we see that the date of the latest recorded transaction was January 21 and it was a
payment from Alan of four thousand dollars we can double-click and actually see or even edit this
payment now some of you might be asking why is this helpful it is helpful because all the other
reports and quickbooks lists the transaction in date order so if you recorded the wrong date with
the transaction you won't know where to look on the report to find your transaction you won't know
where it is because if you put the wrong date it's in a different order that's why we need a report
that shows the transactions in the order entered so that we can always find the transaction even
if we recorded the wrong date for example you were recording an invoice for Betty with a date during
the month of februari however you accidentally recorded the invoice with the date of January when
you try to find it in the customer balance detail you will be looking in the wrong place because you
thought you put the datas februari and you will be looking down here you don't even remember putting
the date as January by accident so it would not even occur to you to look up here that's why you
need a report that shows the transactions in the order in which they were entered into the computer
regardless of date let's change one ourselves and see what happens let's change the date of invoice
number 12 from January 18 to January one we go back to our journal and our journal is scroll
to the top so let's slowly scroll our journal all the way down to the bottom we notice that invoice
number 12 is transaction number 18 invoice number 12 is five from the very bottom of the journal
here it is now let's also take a look at this very same invoice on the customer balance detail
the customer bounce detail shows the section of candy here and we can see this is invoice
number 12 it's dated January 18 and it's the same money amount here as it was in the journal let's
double click here on the invoice number 12 dated January 18 and let's change the date January one
now look what happens to the report when I click Save and close yes aha invoice number
12 for 2380 has jumped from the bottom of the candy section to the top of the candy section
and that's because customer balance detail lists all transactions in date order however
when I come back to the journal i notice that invoice number 12 is still transaction number
18 invoice number 12 is still five transactions from the bottom of the journal invoice number 12
is still in the same position in the journal as one of the most recent transactions that we can
find easily by going to the bottom of the journal the only thing that's different is the date so
let's fix it and change it back double click in your journal change the date back to January 18
and click Save and close and yes and notice the date changes but in the journal the position of
number 12 stays the same if we go back to the customer balance detail we see the transaction
for invoice number 12 has now moved back to the correct position it will be very helpful for you
to remember that the bottom of the journal has the most recently entered transactions
sometimes you are putting in a large variety of transactions in one session if you forget where
you left off you can just look at the bottom of the journal if i open my journal and i scroll
all the way to the bottom I can see the very last transaction that I entered was the payment
on january 21st from alan the second to last transaction i entered was the payment on the
20th from betty and so on so if you are doing a large amount of data entry with a big variety of
transactions and you get distracted during the data entry session and you cannot remember the
last one that you put simply open the journal scroll to the bottom and then you will know