VPRS 3305 Recurrent and Capital Grants Account Journal and Ledger

This series contains the journals and ledgers for the capital and recurrent funding of the affiliated colleges of Victoria Institute of Colleges (VA 571). In 1972 the Victoria Institute of Colleges Act 1965 was amended to provide for greater financial accountability and public reporting of the financial affairs of the affiliated colleges. This may have provided the impetus for the creation of the records in this series.Separate accounts were maintained in relation to the funding of student loans and grants, and the Institutes operating expenses.A generic explanation of an accounting system is given below.Accounting RecordsOverviewPublic sector accounting systems comprise a structured collection of records which together document the financial transactions of the public agency. At the most basic level the flow of information between the integral components, or records, within the system is indicated by the following diagram:The flow of information, however, is not always this straightforward.Journals (Specific and General)The prime function of a journal is to facilitate the posting of credit and debit transactions into the necessary ledger accounts. Like the cash book it is also a book of original entry and is maintained chronologically. Specific journals are often maintained to summarize information for similar transactions, including cash transactions, eg. Cash receipts journal, wages and stores journal. Rather than summarize similar transactions, general journals, on the other hand, provide a convenient record of unusual transactions, including:adjustments to ledger accounts eg. To correct errorstransfers from one account to anothersales or purchases of assetsAlthough the primary flow of information is from the journal to the ledger accounts, where amounts are to be posted from one account to another (particularly common at the end of a financial year), the transactions will be posted through the journal. Relevant accounts are identified either by the ledger folio number or an account number.Ledgers (Subsidiary and General)Ledgers comprise one or more accounts, each account being a statement of all transactions relating to a particular item about which the recording of changes debit and credit transactions is required. Transactions are posted to the ledger accounts from the cash books and journals. The source of the information is subsequently indicated by reference to folio numbers often accompanied by an abbreviation of the source record eg. C or CB for Cash Book, J for Journal, PC for Petty Cash Book etc. The classification of accounts is diverse and usually depends on the operations of the agency and the nature of the information required as part of the financial statements of the agency.Subsidiary ledgers are often maintained either to facilitate a division of responsibilities within a large account, or to provide a separate record of a particular account.The general ledger, however, comprises all accounts necessary for the compilation of the finance statements required by the agency. It is common for a general ledger to comprise a single account to represent the total of the individual accounts in each of the subsidiary ledgers. This device is called a control account.