ABSTRACT
Analysis journals are the primary means of capturing transactions in most accounting systems. Users of accounting software interact with inter alia cash journals, sales journals, purchases journals and payroll journals in order to process transactions. Each entry is tagged with a description or narration and allocated to specific accounts in the same manner as outlined in this chapter. Multiple analysis journals and cash journals, each of which are assigned to different users, improve the efficiency of transaction processing while allowing transactions to be organised according to their nature. This is what happens today, in the twenty-first century. Consider the following extracts (originally written in Latin) from Summa, by Luca Pacioli, written in the fifteenth century:
The memorandum book . . . is a book in which the merchant shall put down all his transactions, small or big, as they take place, day by day, hour by hour. In this book he will put down in detail everything that he sells or buys, and every other transaction without leaving out a jot; who, what, when, where, mentioning everything to make it fully as clear as I have already said in talking about the inventory, so that there is no necessity of saying it over again in detail.
