The General Ledger/Journal Entry Export – Full Report turns a payroll run into a finished journal entry, with debits equal to credits, using your own account codes. Download it as a PDF or Excel file to hand to your bookkeeper, or as a CSV to import into accounting software like QuickBooks.
You set up your account mapping once, and Workstream saves it for every future export. The report has a Setup tab and two export tabs:
Journal Entry Export — the full journal, one section per legal entity, with each earning line broken out by location, department, and job title.
General Ledger Export — the same figures rolled up to one line per account.
📌 Access needed: To use this report, you need to be an admin or have the Access to reports, dashboards, and analytics permission (listed under Payroll management in your roles). If you don't have access, contact your Super Admin.
📌 This report requires Workstream Payroll.
⚠️ Rolling out gradually: This report is being turned on one company at a time, so you may not see it yet. If it isn't on your Built-in reports list, reach out to your Workstream contact.
Open the report
From the sidebar in Team View, open Analytics, then select Reports.
On the Built-in reports tab, select the Payroll category or use the search bar.
Select General Ledger/Journal Entry Export – Full Report.
💡 New to reports? Learn your way around in the Work with built-in and custom reports in Analytics article.
Choose a pay date and entity
Each export covers one payroll run, so you start by picking which run to export.
On the Setup tab, select a Pay Date. Each entry in the list is one payroll run, labelled with the date, Regular or Off-cycle, the payroll name, and the pay period.
Select an Entity. Choose one legal entity, or leave it open to include all of them.
(Optional) Choose which export columns to include.
The page then shows which entities ran payroll on that date and a total summary that matches Workstream Payroll.
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The Setup tab with the Pay Date and Entity selections and the total summary
Map your accounts
Every earning, tax, benefit, and deduction your company has run gets its own row with a default account code. Type your own chart-of-accounts codes over the defaults. Your edits are saved for your company and used in every export from then on.
Map specific job titles or departments to a different account
If some job titles or departments post to a different account, use Map accounts by.
Under Map accounts by, select Job title, Department, or both.
Override rows appear under each earning type — per job title, per department, or per job title and department. For example, Salaried · Operations Director can post to a different account than other salaried roles.
Fill in only the rows that differ. Blank rows use the earning type's account.
Your Map accounts by choice is saved for your company.
📌 Overrides on job title or department rows only apply while that level is selected. If you switch back, Workstream keeps the values you typed, but the journal won't use them.
📌 Location isn't a mapping level. To include location in your accounts, add it to your posting code instead (see the next section).
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The account mapping table with Map accounts by set to Job title
Set your posting code format (optional)
Some accounting systems want the account on each line as one combined code. For example, 1.201.7310 means entity 1, location 201, account code 7310. If yours doesn't, skip this section — the Mapped Account column will simply show your mapped code.
Under Posting code format, pick up to three parts: Entity, Location, Mapped code, Mapped name, Mapped description, Department, or Job title.
Pick a separator character.
Part 1 and the separator are required. Parts 2 and 3 are optional and are skipped on any line where they're empty.
Once set, Mapped Account becomes your combined code and always ends with the mapped code. Account Name moves to its own optional column. Your format is saved for your company.
💡 If a line has none of the parts you chose (for example, a tax line with no location), it shows the mapped code on its own.
💡 If your accounting system's import doesn't want the account name, turn off the Account Name column in the optional export columns.
Review and download your export
Review the Journal Entry Export and General Ledger Export tabs.
Select Download at the top of the report.
Choose PDF, Excel, or CSV.
PDF or Excel — a Workstream-branded file, good for sharing or review.
CSV — one row per journal line with no subtotal rows, ready to import into your accounting system.
Your file covers the pay date and entity you have selected on screen.
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The Download menu with the PDF, Excel, and CSV options
💡 Use QuickBooks Online? Workstream can also sync payroll journal entries automatically. Learn how in the Connect QuickBooks Online with Workstream article.
Good to know
One pay date per export — you can't export a date range or multiple periods at once.
Each payroll run is its own journal entry — an off-cycle run paid on the same day as a regular run is listed separately, labelled Off-cycle.
Separately named entity payrolls — if each of your entities runs payroll under its own name, you'll see one pay date entry per entity. If you run one payroll across entities, you'll see one entry with a section for each entity.
No grand total across entities — the report shows a subtotal for each entity.
Changes can take up to an hour to show — mapping and posting code edits may not appear on the export tabs right away. Refresh the report to see them sooner.
No Make a copy option — a copy of this report would lose your saved account codes.
Large multi-state operations — every state adds its own tax accounts, so the mapping table can get very large. If you operate across many states with dozens of entities, talk to your Workstream contact about a Professional Services integration instead.
⚠️ Known issues — fixes in progress
• Mapping edits from October 13–15 didn't save. Edits made between the October 13 release and 11:00 AM PT on October 15 weren't saved. This is fixed — re-enter any values you typed during that window.
• Download fails when Map accounts by is set. You may see the error "Omni download initiate failed (400)". Until the fix is out, clear the Map accounts by selection before downloading.
• Per-entity total row looks like a regular line. In PDF and Excel files, the total row for each entity isn't formatted as a total yet. A fix is on the way.