General ledger

The master record of every financial transaction in your business, sorted by account. Your P&L and balance sheet are both built from it. When people say "the books," the general ledger is what they mean.

What it is

Every dollar that moves (a sale, a payroll run, a software charge) gets recorded as an entry in the general ledger, tagged to an account like "revenue" or "rent." Roll those entries up and you get your financial statements. The GL is the single source of truth underneath the summaries you usually look at.

Why CEOs care

Because when you point AI at your finances, the GL export is the raw material. A clean general ledger detail export lets an AI flag uncategorized transactions, duplicates, and odd variances before your bookkeeper ever opens the file. A messy or report-formatted export (merged cells, subtotals jammed in with line items) breaks that analysis, so the export format matters as much as the data.

Where you'll see it

At the start of the close-the-books workflow, where the GL export is the thing you hand to AI for a reconciliation-ready fix list.

Example

Andrew's team exports the GL detail as a flat file, drops it into a finance Project, and asks AI to surface anything uncategorized or duplicated. The fix list comes back the same afternoon instead of at month-end.

Related

• ar-ap-aging
• cash-vs-accrual