Accounting

Accounting is your organisation's ledger. Every financial event in Trade Manager ends up here as a balanced journal: a sales invoice, a customer payment, a credit note, a supplier invoice, a supplier payment, a donation. From those journals Accounting produces the general ledger, trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet, receivables aging and customer statements.

Most journals are created automatically when someone posts a document in another module. In Accounting itself you mainly:

• keep the chart of accounts in order;
• look up journals to see how a document was booked;
• run reports for a period or a date.

How to use this guide

Every page follows the same pattern:

• Where (the screen) and Who can do it (the permission);
• numbered steps that use the exact button and field names;
• a table of fields or columns with an example for each;
• what the system does next, and what it refuses.

All examples use one invented company, described below, so the numbers on one page match the next.

The example used in this guide

Bright Home Supplies sells kitchen and cleaning supplies. It reports in GBP and has one business unit, Bright Home – Head Office. The examples continue the Invoicing and Payments guides.

Person	Role in the examples
Farah	Accounts. Records receipts and supplier payments, keeps the chart of accounts.
Nadia	Finance reviewer. Runs month-end reports and checks they agree.
Café Aroma	Customer. Bought supplies for GBP 327.60 in November and paid in two parts.
Kitchen Wholesale Ltd	Supplier. Invoiced GBP 150.00 for stock, paid in full.

The Accounting menu

Open Accounting from the dashboard. The menu on the left shows only the pages you are allowed to use, so two colleagues may see different menus.

Menu item	What it is for	Guide
Chart of accounts	Browse, search, edit and deactivate accounts	Chart of accounts
Create account	Add a new account	Chart of accounts
Journal lookup	Open one journal by its transaction ID	Journals
General ledger	Every posted line for a period, with a running balance	Financial reports
Trial balance	Debits and credits per account; do they agree?	Financial reports
Balance sheet	Assets, liabilities and equity on a date	Financial reports
Profit and loss	Revenue, expenses and the result for a period	Financial reports
Receivables aging	What customers owe, by how overdue it is	Receivables
Customer statements	One customer's account activity and balance	Receivables

How money reaches the ledger

You never type these journals. If an invoice or payment is wrong, correct it in its own module, not in Accounting. See What happens automatically.

Key terms

Term	Meaning	Example
Account	A ledger heading that collects amounts of one kind.	1100 Accounts Receivable
Chart of accounts	The full list of your accounts.	1000 to 5400 for Bright Home
Account type	Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue or Expense. Decides which report the account appears in.	4000 Sales Revenue is Revenue
Normal balance	The side an account usually sits on: Debit (assets, expenses) or Credit (liabilities, equity, revenue).	Accounts Receivable is Debit
Journal	One balanced booking: two or more lines whose debits equal their credits.	Invoice journal: Dr Receivable 327.60 / Cr Revenue 327.60
Journal line	One debit or credit to one account.	Line 1: Debit 1100, 327.60
Posted	A journal that counts in reports.	All reports read posted journals only
Draft	A journal prepared but not yet counting.	An invoice journal before the invoice is posted
Transaction currency	The currency of the document.	USD for an export invoice
Base currency	The currency your books are kept in.	GBP
Business unit	The part of the organisation a journal belongs to. Reports are limited to units you can access.	Bright Home – Head Office
System account	An account the automatic postings rely on. It can't be edited or deactivated.	1100, 2010, 4000

Next: Access and permissions explains why a colleague can see a report you cannot.