General Ledger Accounting Cumming, GA

The general ledger is the master record of every transaction in the business, organized by account. Every dollar that flows through your business shows up somewhere in the GL: revenue accounts when invoices are sent or cash is received, expense accounts when bills are paid or cards are charged, asset accounts when inventory or equipment is bought, liability accounts when loans are taken or bills are accrued, equity accounts when owners contribute or withdraw.

General ledger accounting is the discipline of making sure every transaction is recorded in the right account, that adjusting entries (depreciation, accruals, prepaid amortization) are posted on schedule, and that every balance sheet account is reconciled and supported by underlying detail. The trial balance, the snapshot summary of every account balance, has to actually balance and tie to source documentation for every line.

This is the layer that separates real accounting from glorified data entry. A bookkeeper who only categorizes bank transactions and runs reports without reconciling balance sheet accounts will produce reports that look fine for a year or two, then quietly accumulate errors that turn into a major cleanup project. General ledger discipline prevents that.

Depreciation: each fixed asset (vehicles, equipment, furniture, computers) depreciates on a schedule based on its useful life and the depreciation method elected at purchase. The monthly depreciation entry reduces the asset value on the balance sheet and recognizes depreciation expense on the P&L.

Prepaid expense amortization: annual insurance policies, software subscriptions, professional dues. When you pay $12,000 for an annual insurance policy in January, the cash leaves but the expense should hit at $1,000 per month for 12 months, not $12,000 in January. We track each prepaid balance and amortize monthly.

Accrued payroll and bonuses: if your payroll period crosses a month-end (a Wednesday-to-Tuesday pay period straddling the 1st of the next month), part of the payroll expense belongs to the prior month even though it was not paid until the new month. Accrued payroll entries align the expense to the period the work was performed.

Owner draws and contributions for pass-through entities: keeping these properly recorded against equity (not buried in expense accounts) is what makes the equity section tie out at year-end and keeps the IRS from getting curious about why your tax return numbers do not match your books.

Bank account reconciliations are the most familiar, but every balance sheet account should be reconciled monthly: A/R aging tied to the A/R balance, A/P aging tied to the A/P balance, inventory subledger tied to the inventory balance, fixed asset register tied to the fixed asset balance, loan amortization schedules tied to the loan balances. Each reconciliation produces a supporting schedule that proves the GL balance is correct.

This is where most Cumming small business books quietly drift over time. The bank reconciles fine, so everything looks OK. But the inventory subledger says $87,000 and the GL says $94,500, and nobody has noticed. Or the fixed asset register has not been updated in 18 months and includes $24,000 of equipment that was sold or scrapped. Year-end becomes a multi-week archeology project to reconstruct what actually happened.

Monthly balance sheet reconciliations catch these drifts inside 30 days, when memory is fresh and the source documents are easy to find. Year-end becomes a routine close instead of a forensic exercise.

General ledger accounting is included in monthly bookkeeping for all our clients; there is no separate fee. The discipline of posting recurring entries, reconciling balance sheet accounts, and producing a clean trial balance is part of how we run a monthly close.

For clients who want general ledger accounting as a standalone service (their bookkeeping is being done elsewhere or in-house, but they want senior-level GL oversight), we offer it as a standalone monthly engagement starting at $750 a month, depending on size and complexity.