General Ledger

1. How it works

As explained in the Accounting API docs, Hurdlr's "Invisible" Double-Entry Accounting is enabled in the background for all users.

When you create a user via the Hurdlr API, and you specify their business type, Hurdlr automatically generates a chart of accounts for that user. As the user takes actions in your product, i.e. they send out invoices, classify expenses, and make tax payments, Hurdlr creates the proper double-entry transactions into the user's General Ledger (GL) for accrual basis, cash basis, and modified cash basis.

2. What it enables

With a full-fledged General Ledger behind the scenes, and double-entry transactions being created automatically, you can provide your users with robust financial reporting, tax reporting, and tax filings with just a simple network call.

3. Getting the user's GL transactions

Most users will never need to look at a General Ledger. But, if your product serves accountants or bookkeepers, then they may want direct access to the General Ledger. At any time, you can display the GL or programmatically retrieve the user's GL transactions.

On each entry, you may find the following attributes to be of particular interest:

Field	Description	Format
sourceTable	Entity that originated the underlying GL transactions	String
name	Displayable name describing the entry	String
tranDate	Accounting date of the underlying GL transactions	`yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ`
entryDate	Date the entry was added	`yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ`
transactions	List of GL transactions	Array of transaction objects, explained below

For each GL transaction, you may find the following attributes to be of particular interest:

Field	Description	Format
accountNo	Account number, referencing an account in the Chart of Accounts	String (of numbers)
accountName	Name of the account	String
drAmount	Accounting debit amount	Numeric, with 2 decimal places
crAmount	Accounting credit amount	Numeric, with 2 decimal places

4. Adding journal entries

Most GL transactions can be handled by updating expense, income, invoice, bank transfer, and tax payment transactions accordingly. But occasionally, there may be an advanced use case where an accountant or bookkeeper wants to make a manual journal entry directly into the General Ledger. These transactions can be easily created in the General Ledger embeddable user interface, or programmatically via API.

For example, if an owner was infusing $100,000 into their single-owner S-Corporation, then the Paid-in Capital account would need to be increased. To do so via API, simply look at the user's chart of accounts, and pull out the account number (accountNo) for each account. In this case 11100 corresponds to Bank Account Operating and 35000 corresponds to Paid-in Capital:

curl \
  --request POST \
  --url https://sandbox.hurdlr.com/rest/v5/accounting/journalEntry \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer ${access_token}' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "journalEntry": {
      "tranDate": "2021-10-06T04:00:00.000Z",
      "name": "Capital infusion"
      "transactions": [
        {
          "description": "Capital infusion",
          "accountNo": "11100",
          "drAmount": 100000.00,
          "crAmount": 0
        },
        {
          "description": "Capital infusion",
          "accountNo": "35000",
          "drAmount": 0,
          "crAmount": 100000.00
        }
      ],
    }
  }'