Journals use the information from the source documents to create a chronological listing of all business transactions and detailed information about each transaction.
Journals are preliminary records where business transactions are first entered into the accounting system. The journal is commonly referred to as the book of original entry. Specialized Journals-are journals used to initially record special types of transactions such as sales and purchases in their own journal
Why Use Special Journals
-Groups and records transactions of a like nature. A familiar example is recording all cash received by a business in one place.
-Saves time with summary and less frequent postings to the General Ledger.
-Allows a business to have different individuals responsible for different journals thereby increasing internal controls and allocating the record keeping workload.