The general journal is the chronological record of all of an entity's accounting entries, each with its date, accounts, debit and credit amounts, description and source document. Any balance sheet, P&L or cash flow is built from it.
What it includes
One line per posting: date, entry number, account, description, debit, credit and, where they exist, analytical dimensions, counterparty and currency. A month's journal for a small company can have between 500 and 20,000 lines; a group with 15 entities, several hundred thousand a year.
Example with numbers
A sales invoice of 1,210 including VAT generates a three-line entry: receivables 1,210 debit, sales 1,000 credit, output VAT 210 credit. The month's P&L shows 1,000 in sales; the general journal is the only way to know that the 1,000 comes from that invoice, that customer and that day.
How Fibady does it
Fibady reads each entity's general journal directly from the ERP by API, or by CSV where there is no connector, and builds the consolidated P&L, balance sheet and indirect cash flow on top of it. That is why drill-down reaches the entry: the full journal is inside.