How it works
One company. One December. Every step of the cycle, kept by hand.
Original Entry is a browser workspace for an introductory financial accounting course. A student is given a small company's papers for a single month (invoices, cheque stubs, bank advices) and keeps its books: sorting the documents, journalising, posting to the ledgers, taking a trial balance, adjusting, building the statements and closing the year.
Nothing is multiple choice. There is no answer box to fill. The work is the bookkeeping itself, and it is kept in the form a bookkeeper would keep it.
Firstborn Supply
| 10 × Kayak rack | 120.00 | 1,200.00 |
becomes
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| 112 Accounts Receivable | 1,200.00 | |
| 401 Sales Revenue | 1,200.00 |
What a student works through
The accounting cycle is a sequence, so this is numbered: each step rests on the one before it.
-
Sort the documents
Some papers need an entry. A quotation does not. Deciding which is which is the first judgement of the month, and it is marked.
-
Journalise
Five journals: sales, purchases, cash receipts, cash payments and general. Choosing the one built for a transaction is part of the work.
-
Post to the ledgers
The general ledger and the customer and supplier ledgers. Balances are derived from the entries, never typed in a second time.
-
Take a trial balance
A numeric self-check stands here. The student enters the figure they reached; the software says whether it agrees with the books it derived.
-
Adjust
Depreciation, accruals and prepayments, recorded as entries, in the same journals, against the same ledgers.
-
Build the statements
An income statement, a statement of owner equity, a balance sheet. The student chooses the sections, the subtotals and where each account sits.
-
Close the books
Temporary accounts to income summary, income summary to capital, and a post-closing trial balance to finish the month.
Why it matters
One slip in step two should cost two marks, not sixty-six.
This is where most coursework software fails an accounting student, and the reason Original Entry exists. Every later step depends on an earlier figure. If a student journalises a sale as 1,300.00 when the invoice says 1,200.00, then their receivables, their trial balance, their statements and their closing entries all carry that figure forward. Marked against a single answer key, one slip in the second step costs them the other five as well.
Original Entry marks each step on the figures the student themselves reached. Posting is marked on whether they posted what they journalised. The trial balance is marked on whether it agrees with their own ledgers. The statements are marked on whether they are built from their own adjusted figures. The slip is charged once, where it happened.
| Step | Earned |
|---|---|
| Sorting the documents | 10 / 10 |
| Journalising | 24 / 26 |
| Posting | 0 / 14 |
| Trial balance | 0 / 10 |
| Adjusting | 0 / 12 |
| Statements | 0 / 18 |
| Closing | 0 / 10 |
| Total | 34 / 100 |
| Step | Earned |
|---|---|
| Sorting the documents | 10 / 10 |
| Journalising | 24 / 26 |
| Posting | 14 / 14 |
| Trial balance | 10 / 10 |
| Adjusting | 12 / 12 |
| Statements | 18 / 18 |
| Closing | 10 / 10 |
| Total | 98 / 100 |
The same student, the same books, the same single slip in the second step. A mark of 34 says the month was a failure. A mark of 98 says what actually happened: they understand the cycle and mis-keyed a figure.
It never passes judgement while you work
While a student is keeping the books, the software will refuse a save for a mechanical reason, and it will say exactly which one. It never tells them how the work is going, never marks a figure in red, and never reacts to a designed mistake with a warning. That would turn the exercise into guess-until-it-lets-you-through.
What it says
This entry does not balance. Debits 1,300.00, credits 1,200.00.
What it also says
The sales journal has no column for that account. Use the general journal, or a different account.
Both are facts about the books, not verdicts about the student. The marking happens once, afterwards, and what it found is shown to the instructor as evidence rather than as a score alone. Four judgemental words are kept out of the entire interface by an automated check that reads the templates and the scripts. Since this page is part of that interface, they stay out of this page too.
For instructors
Where each student is, and what they misunderstood
- Every student gets their own figures
- A company ships with variants. Two students sitting together are keeping the books of the same company with different numbers, so the work has to be their own.
- The misunderstanding is named
- A company is authored to provoke particular mistakes, such as treating a sale as an expense, say. When the marking engine recognises one, it names it for the instructor as a diagnosis. It never reaches the student, and it accuses nobody.
- Judgement stays with the person
- Anything the engine cannot decide is flagged for a human. An instructor can change any mark, and the reason they give is recorded with it and survives every re-mark.
- Mistakes are recoverable
- A student who hands in by accident can be given the work back. A student who records a month into another company’s books can be given a fresh set, with the old ones kept and still readable.
- It exports where marks belong
- A marks CSV in a shape a gradebook will take, and a printable record of a whole month of one student’s work, for a re-mark or an academic integrity case.
- Deadlines can be per student
- Extended time is given to a person, not typed into a spreadsheet, and it extends the self-checks along with the deadline.
What it deliberately does not do
- No advertising, no analytics, no tracking, and nothing about anyone is sold.
- No third-party assets. The typefaces are served from this application, so opening a ledger does not announce a student to anybody else.
- No dashboard of vanity metrics, and no messaging inside the app: a second inbox nobody checks is worse than none.
- Nothing requires JavaScript. Every page works without it; scripts only add conveniences, such as keeping an entry safe while the network is away.
- No penalty arithmetic. Late work is recorded as late, to the hour, and what that is worth stays a matter for the instructor's own policy.
Getting started
Students join a section with a code from their instructor. Instructors sign in to set one up. Signing in is a link sent to your school email address, so there is no password to forget.