What a journal entry is
A journal entry records a financial event in your books. Every entry has at least two lines — debits and credits — and they must balance.
Example: You pay $1,000 rent. The journal entry is:
- Debit Rent Expense $1,000
- Credit Cash $1,000
Your cash decreases, your rent expense increases. Your books stay balanced.
Every transaction in Dotio — every invoice, bill, payment, expense — generates a journal entry automatically. You don’t usually have to create them by hand.
When you create one manually
Sometimes you need to post an entry that isn’t a routine transaction:
- Depreciation.
- Accruals.
- Prepaid expenses.
- Adjusting entries from your accountant.
- Inter-company transfers.
Go to Bookkeeping → Journal Entries → New or ask Dotio:
“Post a journal entry: accrue $2,400 of unbilled consulting revenue.”
Viewing the ledger
Your full general ledger is visible in Bookkeeping → Journal Entries. You can:
- Filter by account, date, amount, or description.
- Drill into any entry to see its source.
- Export the entire ledger as Excel or CSV.
Editing and reversing
Once an entry is posted, you can’t edit it. You can reverse it — which posts an opposite entry — and then create a new one. This keeps a clean audit trail.
Multi-currency journal entries
When an entry involves a foreign currency, Dotio records both the transaction currency amount and the base currency amount using the exchange rate on the entry date.