All your accounting entries need to appear in an accounting journal, which is a record of transactions ordered by date. So you should create a Sales Journal for customer invoices, a Sales Refund journal for customer credit notes, a Purchase Journal for supplier invoices, a Purchase Refund journal for supplier credit notes and a Bank Journal for bank transactions. Other journals can be added as well.

To view, edit or create new journals use the menu Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Journals ‣ Journals.

Blue fields are mandatory fields. When you select a journal type, some configuration parameters might be preset. The journal type will tell the system where the journal concerned can be used.

Each journal has a specific way of displaying data. The journal type determines the journal view, which indicates the fields that need to be visible and are required to enter accounting data in that journal. The journal view determines both the order of the fields and the properties of each field. For example, the field Statement has to appear when entering data in the bank journal, but not in the other journals.

By default, when you save a newly created journal, a so-called sequence is created for you. This sequence determines the automatic numbering for accounting entries. Several journals can use the same sequence if you want to define one for them all, and if your legislation allows this.

The default credit and debit account allow the software to automatically generate counterpart entries when you are entering data through Journal Items. In some journals, debit and credit accounts are mandatory. For example, in a bank journal you should put an associated bank account (created in your chart of accounts) in the default debit and credit accounts, so that you do not have to create counterparts for each transaction manually.

A journal can be marked as being centralised. When you do this, the counterpart entries will not be owned by each entry, but will be global for the given journal and period. You will then have a credit line and a debit line centralized for each entry in one of these journals, meaning that both credit and debit appear on the same line. This option is used when posting opening entries in a situation journal for opening entries.

Controls & Tips for Data Entry

You can have control on journals in Odoo – controls over the accounts.

To avoid entering account data in wrong accounts, you can put conditions on the general ledger accounts about which journal can use a given account. To do this, you have to list all the accounts or valid account types in the second tab, Entry Controls. If you have not added any accounts there, Odoo applies no restriction on the accounts for that journal. If you list accounts and/or the types of accounts that can be used in a journal, Odoo prevents you from using any account or account type not in that list. This verification step starts from the moment you enter data. You can only select allowed accounts or account types.

This functionality is useful for limiting possible data entry errors by restricting the accounts to be used in a journal.