The general registers are the basic record of arrivals, confinements, and dispositions of prisoners. The auxiliary registers consist of registers of prisoners confined, registers of deaths, lists of prisoners, ledgers, correspondence, morning reports, and various other records. In many of the Commissary General registers, the entries are arranged alphabetically. The arrangement of entries in both general and auxiliary registers is usually alphabetical by initial letter of the prisoner's surname or chronological. There are name indexes in most of the ledgers and letterbooks and in a few of the other volumes.
Many volumes contain lists of contents that refer to letters of the alphabet and to page numbers.
Some of the registers continue from volume to volume, while others are complete within a volume. In some registers, the entries for names of prisoners are numbered either within each letter of the alphabet or consecutively for the entire volume. In a few groups of registers the numbers continue under each letter of the alphabet from one volume to another. Some registers have two separate lists under each letter of the alphabet, one for officers and another for other prisoners. Many registers and other volumes include records of civilian and federal prisoners with those of Confederate prisoners, and a few volumes contain only names of federal prisoners.