Asiento contable (journal entry)

An asiento contable is the record of one transaction in the accounting journal: it contains at least one debit and one credit, and the two sides must add up to exactly the same amount. Every issued invoice, expense, collection, or payment produces its own entry with its date and its PGC accounts.

The rule that every entry must balance comes from the principle of double-entry bookkeeping, the foundation of any formal accounting.

In practice, each entry has a date, a sequential number, a description of the transaction, and the accounts involved with their amounts on the debit or credit side. When you issue an invoice, the entry records on the debit side what the client owes you, and on the credit side the sales income and the output VAT you will later have to pay over. When the client pays, a separate entry moves that balance from the client to the bank.

The classic mistake is recording only the money side: booking the payment in the bank and forgetting the invoice, or booking an expense without separating the input VAT. The journal then no longer reflects reality and the VAT comes out wrong. Another common slip is fixing an error by deleting an old entry, when the right way is a correcting entry dated when the error is found.

Entries make up the journal (libro diario), which feeds the general ledger, the balance de situación and the cuenta de pérdidas y ganancias. In kontora every invoice, expense, or bank movement generates its double-entry record, and you can review it account by account.

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Plan General de Contabilidad (PGC, Spanish general accounting plan)

Partida doble (double-entry bookkeeping)

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