#50 | NetSuite Create Manual Journal Entry

In this article, we are going to learn how to create a manual journal entry in NetSuite. We are going to look at how you can easily create simple journal entry. There are some basic steps like logging into NetSuite, filling out the primary information, and selecting the accounts and saving it. We will also take a look at what happens when a journal entry is not in balance and how the system will automatically flag it for you.

Here’s the outline that we are going to cover:

Create Manual Journal Entry
When Journal Entry Does Not Balance

I suggest you watch the video. It’s easier to understand if you are a visual/audio learner. The content below is the same as the video. It’s for those who learn by reading.

How to Create Manual Journal Entry

Log on to Make Journal Entry

The first thing you need to do is to login to your NetSuite account and then go to Transactions, Financial, and Make Journal Entries. You can see it on the screenshot below.

Login to NetSuite — Fig.1 – Login to your NetSuite Account

Doing that will send you to the blank journal entry form and it would look something like this:

Fill Primary Information

We will then fill in the primary information as indicated in the image below.

NetSuite Journal Entry Form — Fig.3–Fill up the NetSuite JE form.

We will start with the subsidiary or the set of books. If you are a simple company that only has one set of books, you do not have to worry about subsidiaries. But if you have multiple sets of books that you need to consolidate, you want to pick the right subsidiary. You can also fill in the Memo field which is a description of what the journal entry is. We also have to input the date and the posting period. The date is the date of the journal entry, and the posting period is period that the journal entry will be impacted. Usually, the date is the same as the posting period. Sometimes you have to go back to a previous month or year to fix or adjust something. So that’s why we have the posting period.

Create 2 Line Journal Entries

The next step is to create a two-line journal entry which is really simple. We have to select our GL accounts for the journal entry and when you click the drop-down menu at the top, you’ll see that all of your accounts are available. In this case, we’re going to select our banks and once you select the bank, it will tell you in further detail the bank accounts that we have available. If your books are more complex, you may have 20 or even 30 bank accounts that you can select from.

The journal entry starts with the debit amount. The easy thing is that the field will come up on the debit amount of the debit column. You’ll enter the amount you need to, and we can use the Tab key to move to the next field. You will notice that we have Department. We also have class. In this case, we are a manufacturing company or an inventory company, where we have racks that are wood, and we click the Add button.

Enter debit amount — Fig.5–Instructions for creating manual journal entry on how to enter debit amount in the form

Because we are doing just a two-line journal entry, there’s not much, so we can copy from the previous button so all the details from the previous entry follow us. We don’t have to re-enter anything which is nice.

click copy button — Fig.6–Instructions for creating manual journal entry on how to copy all the details in the previous entry

After that, we can then enter our credit amount. To enter our credit amount, we choose the GL account receivables, and our cursor will automatically go to the debit field. In this case, we don’t need a debit as we’re only doing two lines on a journal entry, so we delete that debit amount. Once you click the tab button, your cursor will go to the credit column automatically. It will auto populate the credit field with $10,000.00 in this case and you can then click Add.

Auto populate the credit field — Fig.7–Instructions for creating manual journal entry on how to enter credit amount.

This is what a journal entry looks like when it is in balance.

Balance Journal Entry — Fig.8–A Sample of a Balance NetSuite Journal Entry

Our debits and credits are equal to each other, so we’re receiving cash into our bank account, and we’re crediting accounts receivable.

When Journal Entry Does Not Balance

Below is what it looks like when a journal entry is not in balance:

Not Balance Journal Entry — Fig.9–A Sample NetSuite Journal Entry that is not balance

If it is not in balance, meaning your credits don’t equal your debits, a shaded line will show how much the journal entry is off by. In our case, we created a credit amount of only $5,000.00, so it shows up that we are now missing $5,000.00 of credits, and we have to fix that before NetSuite will allow us to save this journal entry.

Once we fixed that, we will be then able to save the journal entry successfully, and you will see on top of the page a green stripe that comes up and says the transaction was successfully saved. That’s how you create a manual journal entry in NetSuite.