Accounts payable may have enough items within it to require its own department in the company, or just a subsidiary ledger to supplement the General Ledger of the company.

A subsidiary ledger gives full details of a line-item in the general ledger, especially when it is too detailed to include in the general ledger. The Accounts Payable Subsidiary Ledger will contain all of the transaction details for each credit and debit in the Payables history from a specific period.

The item for Accounts Payable on the general ledger that is updated occasionally with the balance of the subsidiary ledger is known as a control account. Some, but not all, of the items on a general ledger represent control accounts, while some of them are item-per-item accounts of larger expenses and revenue items.