What is a purchase ledger?
A purchase ledger is the record of everything each supplier has invoiced you and everything you have paid them, kept account by account. It shows who you owe, how much, and when it falls due. In UK bookkeeping it is also called the creditors ledger, bought ledger or accounts payable ledger, and its total must agree with the creditors control account in the nominal ledger.
Also called Accounts payable ledger, Creditors ledger, Bought ledger
What a purchase ledger account holds
One account per supplier, and against it:
- Invoices received, with their date, reference, net, VAT and gross.
- Credit notes the supplier has raised.
- Payments made, and which invoices each payment settled.
- The balance outstanding, and when each item is due under that supplier’s terms.
Three-way matching
The control that stops a business paying for goods it never received is matching each supplier invoice against two other documents: the purchase order that authorised the spend, and the goods received note that confirms delivery. Where all three agree on quantity and price, the invoice can be approved for payment.
Where they do not, the invoice goes into query rather than into the payment run. A price difference against the order and a short delivery against the note are different problems, and the ledger should be able to tell them apart.
A worked example
A supplier invoices you £2,000 plus £400 VAT for stock:
- Creditors (balance sheet) is credited £2,400 — you now owe that.
- Purchases or Stock (profit and loss or balance sheet, depending on treatment) is debited £2,000.
- VAT control is debited £400 — input VAT you can reclaim on the next return.
Payment runs and aged creditors
The aged creditors report is the purchase ledger sorted by how old each unpaid invoice is. It drives the payment run: select what falls due, generate a BACS file, post the payments back against the invoices they settle.
Getting the allocation right matters as much here as on the sales side. An unallocated payment leaves the supplier balance correct but the ageing wrong, which is how businesses end up paying an invoice twice.
What this looks like in an accounting system
The purchase ledger carries controls the sales ledger does not, because money is leaving. Invoices route through an authorisation flow before they can be paid, with rejection feedback going back to whoever coded it, and authority limits deciding who can approve what.
Invoice capture is increasingly automated: a scanned PDF goes through OCR from the document store, the extracted values are reviewed, and a purchase invoice is created pending authorisation rather than posted straight through. The review step is the point — OCR is good, not infallible.
Before a payment run goes out, a well-built ledger lets you test it: validate the proposed batch against the supplier accounts as a dry run, and see what it would do, before anything is posted for real.
Purchase ledger questions.
What is the difference between a purchase ledger and a sales ledger?
They are mirror images. The purchase ledger records what you owe suppliers and produces creditors; the sales ledger records what customers owe you and produces debtors. Both post their totals into the nominal ledger through control accounts.
Is the purchase ledger the same as accounts payable?
In practice yes. "Purchase ledger" and "bought ledger" are the usual UK terms; "accounts payable" is the American equivalent. Strictly, accounts payable is the balance owed and the purchase ledger is the record that produces it.
What is a purchase ledger control account?
The account in the nominal ledger holding the total of every supplier balance. Reconciling it back to the sum of the individual supplier accounts is a standard month-end check, and a difference means something was posted to the control account directly.
What does a purchase ledger clerk do?
They run the ledger day to day: coding and posting supplier invoices, matching them to orders and delivery notes, resolving queries, preparing payment runs and reconciling supplier statements. Also called an accounts payable clerk.
What is a supplier statement reconciliation?
Comparing the statement a supplier sends against your purchase ledger account for them, and explaining every difference. It catches invoices you never received, credits you were owed and duplicates, and it is the main control over creditor accuracy.
Trade Ledgers
See the purchase ledger running: invoices routed for authorisation, OCR capture from the document store, and a payment run you can test before anything posts.
Explore the Trade LedgersNext in the glossary.
What is a sales ledger?
A sales ledger is the record of everything each customer has been invoiced and everything they have paid, kept account by account.
Read the definition →What is a nominal ledger?
A nominal ledger is the central accounting record that holds every financial transaction a business makes, summarised by account.
Read the definition →Aged debtors and aged creditors
An aged debtors report lists what every customer owes, split by how long it has been outstanding — typically current, 30, 60, 90 and older.
Read the definition →