Believe it or not there are about 4 or 5 ways to enter the exact same journal entry.  The module you use is dependent on the actual entry.  In general I use the concept that you should use the same process for something all the time unless something really warrants you to change the process for a particular entry.

Where do you normally go in the program to buy things?  That is your normal process for buying things.

For most of us, that is the Purchases module.  My process is, if the vendor doesn't exist, then add the vendor.  Then open the Purchases module, select the vendor and enter the purchase.  For Capital Asset purchases I make sure I enter an appropriate description so that when someone asks in the future you know what was purchased even if you can't locate the paper (eg. two years later - someone may ask when or where did you buy the drill press and do we still have a warranty left on it).  In addition to full description and warranty, I also include Serial Numbers if available.

A general journal entry will work also but if you used a cheque to pay for it, you can't easily account for the cheque number in a general journal entry.  You have to watch the cheque numbers more carefully the next time you use Payments and adjust it to the correct next number.  General journal entries do not have a large comment and you don't need all the description in the journal entry or ledger reports anyway.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the reply. When recording purchases, I would go into payables, then bills and record it that way. This asset is on a receipt, paid by credit card, with other items that are not considered assets. I have recorded the receipt as normal and put the whole thing into the material account. Should I have deducted the asset amount from it and recorded it separately in another transaction in the asset account? Or would I be able to do it on the same transaction but on separate lines to record in their appropriate accounts?

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the reply. When recording purchases, I would go into payables, then bills and record it that way. This asset is on a receipt, paid by credit card, with other items that are not considered assets. I have recorded the receipt as normal and put the whole thing into the material account. Should I have deducted the asset amount from it and recorded it separately in another transaction in the asset account? Or would I be able to do it on the same transaction but on separate lines to record in their appropriate accounts?

You can enter as many line items as you wish on a purchase invoice.  See the invoice below.  It doesn't matter in my example who the vendor is, the date of the entry or which account you send it to.  I don't have a Tools Capital asset account in my sample file but I used Equipment instead and my file is in 2015.

This is how I would have entered it from the beginning because this is reality and I usually stick to reality as much as possible.  Now that you have posted it all to Materials, you can use a General Journal entry to remove the dollar amount from the Materials Expense (Credit) and transfer it to the Asset account (Debit) with the appropriate comment.  I would use the same date of entry.  Or you can adjust the original entry if you wish.

That is wonderful!

Thank you both so much for helping!

Hi Ashton, if either of these suggested answers helped, please do mark one or both as verified  (by clicking the "more" button on the response) for the benefit of others in this forum :). Thank you!

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