The Journal The meat and potatoes of every record book! Only SAE project hours and dollars $$ are recorded.

The journal is the “heart” of your FFA record book. Take extra care and time to make sure you enter the information correctly! Please follow the directions provided.

After saving your budget page, go to Record Book and select journal. Select the month your project started. The journal is used to record all income, expenses and hours that you work on your enterprise. It should be kept up-to-date. Only activities related to your enterprise should be included in the journal. Do not enter equipment, breeding livestock or depreciable inventory here, there is a different location for these items in the book. FFA activities are entered in a different location of the record book; do not enter FFA meetings, judging contests, conferences here. The types of projects you entered on the introduction page are automatically listed in the enterprise columns.

We know that this journal page is January, it says so at the top of the page. In column 1, Date, you will only enter the actual day that you purchased or sold an item or worked. Example: 2, 15, 28. Do not enter Jan 2, or 1-15, or 1/28. In column 2, Description, describe what occurred. Be specific, if you worked, list what specific jobs your performed, to a point. If you purchased or sold something, list what that item was.

You may use more than one line to describe what tasks you performed You may use more than one line to describe what tasks you performed. Leave the date column blank when you utilize additional lines for the description. When you purchase items, complete the Units columns. Column 3 indicates the number of items bought and column 4 is the price paid for the individual items. DO NOT put the total paid for all items, just the cost of one item. Either use the unit column every time or do not use the column at all.

The program will not let you enter amounts directly into the income & expense totals columns or the total hours self labor! Entries must be made into the column for the specific enterprise and the program will transfer the information for you.

Record income, or money that you have received for your enterprises in the column for the specific project. This can be from wages or selling items. Wages should be recorded as gross wages, not your net pay (deductions are not listed.) The program will automatically total the income for you in column 5; you can not enter values in columns 5, 6, or 7. Enter expenses for your enterprises in the appropriate column. Expenses indicate the total amount that you paid for an item. The program will automatically total the expenses for you in column 6; you can not enter values in columns 5, 6, or 7.

Hours or time that you work on your enterprise project are entered into the hours column. Be sure to enter the hours in whole hours only, not partial hours or minutes. Enter the hours for each project separately under the correct column. Example: market animal hours are recorded under market animal  The program will automatically total the hours for you in column 7; you can not enter values in columns 5, 6, or 7.

You may enter your work experience wages and hours according to the frequency of wages being paid: monthly, twice a month or weekly. Most students find it easiest to enter wages and hours once a month at the end of the month, or at least with every pay period. Be sure to fully describe the tasks performed when you were at your job.

You can summarize your total hours spent with an ownership enterprise at the end of each month. You need not enter every day you feed, summarize monthly! Be sure to fully describe what you did with your project. It is OK to use more than one line. Be sure the hours are in the correct column!

Check this out!!! The program automatically totals the columns for you. Imagine totaling this by hand?!? Not fun. The program also automatically transfers this information to the rest of the months.

Enter information for each month as it occurs (so you don’t forget) Enter information for each month as it occurs (so you don’t forget). You should update your journal monthly! Remember to enter the information under the appropriate column for each enterprise: market animal vs work experience. Some enterprise projects are year long and others may only last a few months. Work experience sometimes is only for a few months in the summer or all year long. Most livestock projects are for the county fair and only last a few months. Don’t worry about this, just enter the information in the correct months.

At the end of the year, all of your totals will appear in the totals columns. They will be totaled by enterprise, as well as totals of all enterprises. The addition is done for you and automatically transferred to your income summary page (no we have not talked about this page yet).