Grade 8 EMS Term 2 Week 6: Recording and Closing Off the Cash Receipts Journal

Your Week Ahead

This week your Grade 8 learners get hands-on with one of the core bookkeeping tools in the CAPS Financial Literacy strand: the Cash Receipts Journal, or CRJ. The focus is on recording cash transactions accurately in the journal and then closing it off correctly at the end of the period. These are foundational skills that learners will build on all the way through to Grade 12, so it is worth taking the time to get it right now.

The CRJ sits within a broader sequence of accounting concepts that learners have been working through in Term 2. By this point they should have a basic understanding of what source documents are, particularly receipts, and why businesses keep records of money coming in. If some learners are still a little shaky on source documents, a quick five-minute recap at the start of Day 1 will go a long way before you move into the recording process.

With only two lessons this week, your pacing needs to be deliberate. Day 1 is best used to focus on recording transactions in the CRJ columns correctly, making sure learners understand which column each amount belongs in. Day 2 can then move into totalling and closing off the journal, which is where many learners make small but costly errors. A calm, step-by-step approach works well here.

This Week’s Lesson Plan

Here is a suggested focus for each of your two lessons this week.

Day 1: Introduce the structure of the CRJ and practise recording a set of cash receipt transactions in the correct columns, using source documents as a reference point.

Day 2: Total each column of the completed CRJ and close it off correctly, with a focus on checking that totals balance before the journal is ruled off.

Download Your Lesson Plan

Download the full 2-day lesson plan as a Word document. Includes detailed activities, differentiation notes, and assessment guidance.

Download Lesson Plan (Word)