Accounting Overview: How Your Books Work

What it is

The Accounting module keeps a complete double-entry set of books for your business automatically. You do not enter journal entries by hand: every sale, purchase, return, expense, payment and stock write-off is recorded in the books at the moment it happens, by the same screen you used to record it.

Accounting is part of your plan. The books are written only while your current plan includes the Accounting feature (see Multi-Tenant & Billing).

What gets recorded, and how

When this happens	What the books record
A sale (POS, Create Sale, an online order)	Money in to Cash or Bank (or Accounts Receivable if sold on credit); Sales Revenue at the full price; Sales Tax Payable for tax charged; Shipping Income for shipping (if you treat it as income); Sales Discounts for any discount. Separately, Cost of Goods Sold goes up and Inventory goes down at the product's cost.
A sales return	Sales Returns & Allowances goes up and the money goes back (or the receivable shrinks). The returned stock goes back into Inventory and the cost comes off Cost of Goods Sold.
A purchase	Inventory goes up; Cash/Bank goes down (or Accounts Payable goes up if bought on credit). Reclaimable tax is kept apart as Input Tax Receivable when you choose that in Accounting Settings.
A purchase return	The purchase is reversed in proportion to what was sent back.
An expense	The expense category goes up; Cash/Bank goes down, or Accounts Payable goes up if left on credit.
A payment (money received or paid against a credit document)	Cash/Bank moves against Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable.
A stock adjustment or damaged goods	The cost of the lost stock is booked to Inventory Adjustments and comes out of Inventory.
A gateway payout	Gross moves out of Payment Gateway Clearing; the fee goes to Gateway Fees; the rest goes to Bank.

The rules the books follow

Never edited, never deleted. A journal entry can't be changed. A mistake is fixed with a reversing entry (the Reverse action in the Journal), which leaves a visible trail.
Always balanced. Every entry has debits equal to credits. The system refuses to save one that doesn't.
Recorded with the event. If the books can't be updated, the sale/purchase/expense itself is not saved, so the two can never disagree.
Exact money. All figures are calculated in whole cents.

The Accounting menu

Screen	What it is for
Overview	Cash and bank, inventory, tax owed and profit at a glance, month to date versus last month, and the last six months.
Chart of Accounts	Every account and its balance; add your own accounts.
Journal	Every entry, filterable by type and date, with View lines and Reverse.
Trial Balance	Every account's balance on one date; debits must equal credits.
Profit & Loss	Revenue, cost of sales and expenses for a period.
Balance Sheet	Assets, liabilities and equity as of a date.
Tax Report	Tax collected and tax paid, by rate, and what you owe.
Reconciliation	Built-in checks that the books agree with your stock, sales and purchases.
Expenses	Rent, salaries, utilities and other costs.
Receivables	Who owes you money, and how overdue.
Payables	Whom you owe, and how overdue.
Payments	Every receipt and payment made against credit documents.
Gateway Payouts	Record what your card gateway paid out, with its fee.
Opening Balance	The starting position when you begin using the books.
Accounting Settings	How tax, shipping and card payments are booked.

Getting started

Open Accounting Settings and choose how tax, shipping and card payments should be booked.
If you already have stock, cash or customer balances, enter them once in Opening Balance.
Trade as normal: POS, purchases, expenses. The books fill themselves.
Open Reconciliation now and then: every check should read OK.

Tip: if a figure looks wrong, open the Journal, filter by the transaction type, and use View lines to see exactly which accounts an entry touched.