What is a Journal (GL Journal)?

A restaurant POS system journal is a listing of transactions that post to the General Ledger (GL). Journals allow you to track and manage financial information daily, such as sales, returns, taxes, and types of payment, so that this information can be recorded in your restaurant’s general ledger. This makes sure that all the information that the POS has generated is accurately reported within the company’s financial reports.

What is the Journal (GL Journal) in the Restaurant POS System and How to Use It?

The POS system groups these transactions into journal entries, which can be exported or synced with accounting software once the transactions happen in the POS. These entries condense activity into numbers and bucket them into different “accounts” such as revenue, taxes, or types of payment.

For example, a typical POS GL journal entry may include:

• Total daily sales revenue
• Taxes collected
• Credit card payments
• Cash transactions
• Refunds or discounts

These entries are automatically transmitted to the accounting system at either the end of the day or in predefined reporting periods. This integration saves restaurant owners from manually entering fees and tips into their accounting systems, which in turn saves them time, reduces the chances of errors, and keeps their financials in order.