Complete Transaction Process Guide

Introduction

Accountz has revolutionised double entry bookkeeping: every aspect of a transaction is entered in a single line. This means that provided you fill in the minimum required fields (‘Tax Date’, ‘From Account’, ‘To Account’, ‘Total Amount’ and ‘VAT Code’ (if you are VAT registered)), your books will always balance.

Until certain, necessary fields have been completed within a transaction line, the transaction will display an exclamation mark at the start of the row, and the transaction value / running balance value will appear as struck through.

Sales

1.If you have a paid sale, your transaction looks like this (Fig. 1):

2. For an unpaid sale (Fig. 2):

When the sale is paid, go to your Green Books (Transfer Transactions) and make another entry (Fig. 3):

Go back to your initial transaction (Fig. 2) and tick the Paid box. This also updates your customer statement (for those with the Customer Records component).

If you receive a cheque for this sale, but don’t pay it in separately (as you have some other cheques to pay in at the same time), then you would need to replace Fig. 3 with Fig 3a (below), which pays the money into a theoretical holding account, called Undeposited Funds:

Then, when you actually pay in the cheques together (let’s say they add up to 140) you create another transfer transaction (Fig. 4):

The reason for this is (a) it gives you a more accurate audit trail, and (b) it makes it easier to reconcile your bank account.

As you can see from the above, Accountz tracks the flow of money, from somewhere to somewhere else and so for all these examples the logic is that money has flowed from Sales Account to Bank Account.

In Example 1 this happens directly in one transaction line; in Example 2 there are intermediate steps but the result is ultimately the same.

Purchases

1. For a completed purchase, say £100 for Equipment Hire, your transaction in the Red Books (Purchase Transactions) table looks like this (Fig. 5):

2. For an unpaid purchase (i.e. on credit) your transaction in the Red Books looks like this (Fig. 6):

When the purchase is actually paid for, go to the Green Books (Transfer Transactions) and make another entry, thus (Fig. 7):

Go back to your initial transaction (Fig. 6) and tick the Paid box. This updates your supplier statement (for those with the Supplier Records component).

Transfers

Aside from the usage described in Purchase and Sales above, you will tend to use Transfer Transactions for such tasks as topping up petty cash or paying of the company credit card, and paying your VAT bill:

1. Topping up petty cash (Fig. 8):

2. Paying off the company credit card (Fig. 9):

3. Paying your VAT bill to HMRC (Fig. 10):