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The chart of accounts and journal entries

How ArmPOS writes your sales, purchases and expenses to the ledger, how to add a ledger account, and how to write and post your own journal entry.

3 min read Updated 19 Oct 2026 On plans with Accounting

Names like these, in green, are pages inside your ArmPOS shop. Sign in to your shop to open them.

By the end you will know how ArmPOS keeps a ledger of your sales, purchases and expenses, how to add an account to it, and how to write your own journal entry.

The ledger sits under Accounting, which comes with some plans only. It is for whoever keeps your books. For the day-to-day figures, the reports under Reports are enough.

How the ledger fills itself

Each time you record one of these, ArmPOS writes a journal entry for you, already posted:

You record The entry
A sale Accounts Receivable up, Sales Revenue up
A customer's payment Cash (or the account it went into) up, Accounts Receivable down
A sale return Sales Returns up, Accounts Receivable down
A purchase Inventory up, Accounts Payable up
A payment to a supplier Accounts Payable down, Cash (or the account) down
An expense Expenses up, the paying account down

The ledger accounts these need (1000-CASH, 1100-AR, 1200-INV, 2100-AP, 4000-REV, 4010-RET, EXP) are made the first time they are used.

Deposits, transfers between your money accounts, accounts' opening balances, purchase returns and the cost of the goods you sell are not written to the ledger. Deleting or editing a sale, a payment or an expense doesn't change its entry either. Add a journal entry yourself for those.

System Settings › Feature Toggles › Automatic Journal Entries turns the automatic entries on or off. They are on for a new shop.

The chart of accounts

Accounting › Chart of Accounts lists the ledger's accounts with their Code, Name, Parent, Type and whether they are Active.

Chart of Accounts: Search, Create and Import Chart of Accounts, then Code, Name, Parent, Type, Active and Action, with 1000-CASH Cash, 1100-AR Accounts Receivable, 1200-INV Inventory, 2100-AP Accounts Payable, 3000 Owner's capital, 4000-REV Sales Revenue, 4010-RET Sales Returns and EXP Expenses.
The accounts with a letter code were made by ArmPOS. 3000 Owner's capital was added by hand.
  1. Click Create.
  2. Fill the Code and the Name. For example 3000 and Owner's capital.
  3. Pick the Type. Asset, Liability, Equity, Income or Expense.
  4. Pick a Parent if the account belongs under another one, and leave Status on Active.
  5. Click Save. Save waits until Code, Name and Type are filled.
The New Account window: Code 3000, Name Owner's capital, Type Equity, Parent None, Status Active, with Cancel and Save.
Code, Name and Type are required. Parent groups an account under another.

Import Chart of Accounts loads many at once from a CSV with the columns code, name, type, and optionally parent_code and is_active. Download example gives a file in that shape. Rows whose code already exists are updated.

Don't rename or delete the accounts ArmPOS made (1000-CASH, 1100-AR and the others): deleting one leaves its entries pointing nowhere, and ArmPOS makes a new one the next time it needs it.

Write a journal entry

  1. Open Accounting › Journal Entries and click Create.
  2. Check the Date and write the Description. Say what happened, for example "Owner adds cash to the till".
  3. Fill one line per account. Pick the Account, then put the amount in Debit or in Credit, never both. Memo is optional. Add line adds more lines.
  4. Check the badge says Balanced. Total Debit must equal Total Credit.
  5. Click Save. The entry is saved as a Draft.
  6. Post it. On the entry's row, click the check icon. A draft that doesn't balance is refused.
The journal entry window: Date 19/10/2026, Description "Owner adds cash to the till", line 1 1000-CASH Cash with Debit 100, line 2 3000 Owner's capital with Credit 100, Total Debit 100.00, Total Credit 100.00, Balanced, and Cancel and Save.
Money coming into Cash is a debit; the owner's capital going up is a credit. The badge turns Balanced when both sides match.
Journal Entries: Date, Description, Source, Status and Action, with "Owner adds cash to the till", manual, Posted, above the automatic entries such as Expense #40, Purchase #PR_0010 and Sale #SL_0380.
Source says where an entry came from: manual for yours, sale, payment_sale, expense and the rest for ArmPOS's.

A draft can be edited or deleted. A posted entry can't: to correct one, post a new entry that reverses it.

What's next

Read the ledger's totals in Trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet, tax.

Still stuck?

Write to us and a person answers. If you already have a shop, Ask support inside it sends us the page you're on.

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