General Ledger
Definition
The complete record of every transaction in your business, organized by account. All financial statements are built from it.
Want a deeper explanation?
When a number on the P&L looks wrong, the general ledger is where you find out why. Every amount traces back to individual entries here.
A clean chart of accounts keeps the ledger readable. Watch for: accounts with hundreds of tiny miscoded entries, which usually means bank rules are categorizing things wrong.
Example
Pulling the general ledger for the "Freight-In" account shows every freight bill recorded this year, so you can see which shipments are missing.