The General Ledger – Springly Help Center

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What is the General Ledger?
Who can access it?
How do I view the General Ledger?
The different types of General Ledger
How do I export the General Ledger?
Why don't third parties appear in the export?

What is the General Ledger?

The General Ledger is a fundamental accounting document. It contains all bookkeeping entries, organized by account and then by date. Unlike the Journal, which lists entries in chronological order, the General Ledger lets you see all activity for a given account at a glance.

Who can access it?

Primary administrators and administrators with access to accounting (including read-only access) can view the General Ledger from Accounting > Documents.

Note: dependent organizations (chapters) whose accounting is consolidated at the parent level only have access to a simplified version of the General Ledger, limited to revenue and expense accounts.

How do I view the General Ledger?

Go to Accounting > Documents, then select the General Ledger tab.

From this page, you can:

Filter by account: enter an account number or name to display only the entries associated with it.
Choose a date: the General Ledger displays from the beginning of the accounting period up to the date you select (by default, the end of the current period). The period is determined automatically from that date.
Choose the type of General Ledger: general, accounts receivable, accounts payable, or contact.

Entries are displayed with the following details for each line: date, description, associated third party, journal, debit amount, credit amount, and running balance.

Good to know: It is not possible to choose a start date — the General Ledger always begins on the first day of the accounting period. To view entries between two specific dates (for example, 08/01 to 08/31), use Accounting > Documents > Journal or Accounting > Search. Both pages offer a "between … and …" filter.

Types of General Ledger

Springly offers four types of General Ledger, accessible from the selector at the top of the Accounting > Documents > General Ledger page:

General Ledger

It groups all accounts in your chart of accounts. You can filter by a specific account or display all accounts.

Accounts Receivable Ledger

It displays entries from the Accounts Receivable account. It makes it easy to identify unpaid invoices and track each customer individually.

Accounts Payable Ledger

It displays entries from the Accounts Payable account. It makes it easy to identify unpaid bills and track each vendor individually.

Contact Ledger

It displays entries from the Contacts account and shows transactions linked to your contacts (members, donors, event registrants, etc.) when those transactions do not go through an accounts receivable or accounts payable account. Each movement on this account is associated with an identified contact in your database.

How to export the General Ledger?

From the Accounting > Documents > General Ledger page, once your filters are set and results are displayed, click the export icon (Excel or PDF) at the top of the page.

Depending on the size of your accounting data, the download will start immediately or you will receive the file by email.

In the General Ledger export, third parties are no longer displayed for accounts that are not third-party accounts, meaning accounts outside the payables/receivables classes.

Third parties remain visible in the Springly interface and in search — nothing changes for your day-to-day review.

Good news: Third parties remain visible in the interface and in search. Nothing changes for your day-to-day review.

Why this approach?

The chart of accounts is organized into several account classes (including off-balance-sheet accounts).

Third-party accounts — covering accounts receivable, accounts payable, and related — are the only accounts for which associating a third party has real accounting significance.

For all other account classes (expenditures, revenues, cash, etc.), displaying a third party adds no accounting value and can even produce incorrect data when a payment is linked to multiple third-party accounts. The General Ledger export must be a reliable and accurate document.

Third parties remain visible in the Springly interface for your day-to-day management. If you want to track transactions by third party from exports, several options are available:

Third parties are always displayed for day-to-day management. If you want to track them from exports, several options are available:

The Contact General Ledger export: for all transactions linked to your contacts (members, donors, attendees), use this dedicated general ledger. It gives you a precise view of movements by contact.
The Subsidiary Ledger export (accounts receivable or payable): if you have enabled subsidiary accounting, it lets you track transactions broken down by customer or vendor third party.
Springly search: from Accounting > Search, you can also view entries linked to third parties and open any transaction to see its details.

And for Excel power users:

In the general export, you can add a column and a formula to use the record ID as a shared identifier.

=XLOOKUP(C2, Contact!$C:$C, Contact!$F:$F, "")

Where C2 = the id_piece column from the general export, and Contact!$C:$C / Contact!$F:$F = the id_piece and tiers columns from the Contact export.

The third-party column will be rebuilt using the record ID.

Learn more