General Ledger

The master record holding every account a business posts transactions to.

The general ledger aggregates entries from every subsidiary record — sales, purchases, payroll, cash — into the account balances from which the financial statements are built. In double-entry systems each transaction hits it at least twice, and auditors trace figures from the published accounts back into it to verify them.

Every invoice eventually lands in the general ledger, which is where the auditors started.