General journal definition including break down of areas in the definition. Analyzing the definition of key term often provides more insight about concepts. General journal can be defined as: All purpose journal for recording the debits and credits of transactions and events. General journal is where we can record just about any transaction. When setting up an accounting system to be operated by hand we may use special journals to quicken the process rather than using the general journal for every transaction but not all entries will be able to fit in a special journal and all entries can generally be recorded in a general journal format.