Journal and voucher chronology
Accounting transaction entries in a general ledger must be numbered with no gaps in the sequence.
Several countries have these requirements:
- Reports of the transactions must be submitted by journal code.
- General ledger shows an ascending linear relationship between journal numbers and transaction dates. Gaps between numbers are not permitted. Renumbering is permissible to fill gaps that are caused by deleted transactions as long as the ascending linear relationship is maintained.
Chile specifics
Accounting vouchers must be consecutively numbered and should not be stamped by the SII.
Numbering can be unique and correlative for the set of all vouchers and all establishments of the company or independent correlative numbering for each type of voucher within each establishment.
The financial records, ledgers, and journals that constitute the accounts of a company can be divided into separate books:
- Ingreso: Income accounting voucher is a document that is used to record only the transactions that generate real income of funds.
- Egreso: Expense accounting is a document that is used to record only the transactions that generate actual outflow of funds.
- Transpaso: Transfer accounting voucher is a document that is used to record financial information relating to transactions that do not involve income and outflow of funds. An example is operations on accrual basis.
Journal voucher references are not required to correlate with transactions date, nor is a secondary sequential reference required.