General Ledger (GL)

The General Ledger (GL) is the central record of all accounts of an organization, in which all business transactions are recorded systematically and completely. It forms the binding basis of financial accounting and thus of all analyses of costs actually incurred.

In IT cost management, the general ledger is the source of actual costs: the relevant accounts are mapped to Cost Pools, from which the cost model derives the distribution to services and recipients. A central quality criterion is reconciliation to the ledger: the sum of the pools must equal the sum of the underlying accounts. Only then do service costs and internal charges remain traceable to the accounts and auditable.

The general ledger must be distinguished from the subledgers, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable or fixed asset accounting, whose results flow into the general ledger in aggregated form. Its structure and maintenance follow the applicable accounting standards, such as IFRS or national GAAP (e.g. HGB in Germany).