Summary-Journal Form of Accounting

in the USSR, one of the most progressive methods of doing book-keeping work.

The basic technical forms (accumulation registers and journals) began to be used by industrial enterprises in 1930. In 1949 the Ministry of Finances of the USSR developed a standard scheme of registers of the summary-journal form of accounting that was recommended to all branches of industry. From Jan. 1, 1960, this system was introduced as a common form of accounting in the majority of the sectors of the national economy. The basis of the summary-journal form of accounting is the principle of the accumulation of data contained in the initial documents; according to this principle, the registration of operations is combined with their classification in corresponding accounts of the bookkeeping registers. The basic registers that are used in the summary-journal form of accounting are the journals (the books of original entry) in which documents are registered in chronological order. The totals represent completed bookkeeping entries that reflect the turnovers in the ledger; that is, they substitute for summaries. Hence, these registers are called summary journals. In addition to these registers, auxiliary registers are kept that are intended for classification of the analytical indexes in cases when it is difficult to carry out the classification directly in the summary journal.

The summary journals and the auxiliary registers contain all data necessary to obtain indexes for financial accounting and in many cases for cost accounting; therefore, an independent cost accounting on cards is carried out only in cases of most complicated accounts. The summary journals are organized according to the column-and-line principle, in which the total of all operations (or the total of turnovers of similar operations) is reflected simultaneously by an entry on the debit and on the credit of the account. The data of summary journals, of the auxiliary registers, and of the main ledger serve for direct presentation of the bookkeeping balance and of reports.

The summary-journal form of accounting offers advantages over all preceding forms of bookkeeping. It allows the combination of financial and cost accounting, the obtaining of accounting indexes directly from the accounting registers, the reduction of the number of bookkeeping entries, and the regulation of the procedure by which the economic operations are reflected in the accounting registers.

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