Income and expenses

Where

Financials → Petty Cash → Expenses

Plan

All plans

Permission

Accounting → Expense

This is the part of Financials a shopkeeper uses most: rent, electricity, wages paid in cash, a delivery charge — and money in that did not come through the till.

Available on every plan.

How to record an expense

1. Go to Financials → Petty Cash → Expenses and click New expense.
2. Pick the Expense category, or leave it as No category.
3. Type the Amount.
4. Set the Expense date — today by default.
5. Choose the Method: Cash, Bank transfer, Cheque, Mobile money or Credit card.
6. Leave Number blank and one is generated for you.
7. Write a clear Description — “Rent, March”, “Electricity”, “Wages, Kofi”. This is what you will be reading back in six months.
8. Attach the receipt under Attachments.
9. Click Save.

Saving only records it. To get it into your accounts, open the row menu and click Post to GL.

How to record other income

Exactly the same, under Financials → Petty Cash → Incomes. Note the menu says Incomes but the page is headed Other income.

How to create a category

1. Go to Financials → Petty Cash → Expense Categories and click New category.
2. Type a Name and click Save.

Income categories work the same way.

A category does not choose an account

It is natural to expect Rent to post to a rent account. It does not.

A category is a label for reporting only — there is no account field on it. Every expense in your business posts to the same expense account, whatever its category, and which account that is comes from your posting profiles.

The credit side is chosen by the Method, not by you — cash goes to the cash account, bank transfer to the bank account, and so on. There is no bank-account picker, so if you have two bank accounts you cannot say which one this came out of.

What to watch out for

The success message does not mean it posted

Post to GL shows “Posted to the general ledger” even when nothing was posted — if your posting profiles are not set up, if the amount is zero, or if the expense has no location.

The same message appears when an approval rule has parked it instead.

Trust the Posted badge on the row, never the message. If it still says Unposted, nothing reached your accounts.

Deleting a posted expense leaves the accounting behind

Delete has no check at all for whether the expense was posted, and it does not reverse the accounting entry.

Delete a posted expense and the document disappears from your list while the entry stays in your ledger forever — your expenses will not match your accounts and nothing explains why.

There is no cancel or void on an expense. If you have posted one wrongly, leave it alone and ask whoever keeps your books to reverse the journal entry.

• Editing a posted expense is not blocked either. Change the amount after posting and the document no longer matches the entry it created.
• The Post button may not work for the person who can see it. It appears for anyone who can post journal entries, but the server requires the expense-edit permission. The reverse also happens — someone able to post may never see the button.
• Expenses and incomes work offline, including posting. An offline post is optimistic; it can still turn out unposted once it syncs.

Related

• Setting up your books — posting profiles
• Banking and cash