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How to use
How to use accounting software for small business
Set up a company, chart of accounts and open period, then post journal entries, reconcile the bank and close the month in Accounting & Finance.
Checked against the product on 18 October 2026
How to use accounting software for small business
Accounting & Finance keeps double entry books for every company your workspace runs. You set up a company, build a chart of accounts, post entries, and read the trial balance and statements that come out of them. Every figure on every screen is built from posted entries, so any number can be followed back to the entries that made it.
Note for QA and support: every screen in this App carries its own How to use button. This guide was written from those panels and from the menu. If a detail here disagrees with what a screen shows, the screen is right and this file needs updating.
Where everything lives
The menu is grouped by the job you are doing. Each group opens the pages listed here.
Allocation Rules, Allocation Runs, Cost Centre Profitability
Close & Controls
Period Close, Year End, Revaluation, Authority Limits, Segregation of Duties, Audit Trail, Ledger Integrity
Group Finance
Intercompany, Due To and Due From, Intercompany Reconciliation, Financial Consolidation, Elimination Rules, Translation Rates, Consolidation Adjustments
Reports & Analytics
Reports Hub, Period Comparison, Trends, Ratios, Top Movers, Metrics & KPIs, KPI Trends, Customer Analytics, Supplier Analytics
App Connections
Posting Backlog, Account Mapping, Company Mapping
AI & Data
Finance Assistant, Unusual Entries, AI Suggestions, Import Data, Documents
You only see the pages your role allows. A small business can run on the Ledger, Receivables & Payables, Cash & Banking and Close groups and ignore the rest until it needs them.
Setting the App up, in order
Set up four things before you post anything: a company, a fiscal year, a chart of accounts and an open period. Without all four, nothing can be posted.
Check your company. The first time anybody opens the App, one company is created for you, named after your workspace, with a placeholder currency. Open it under Setup, Companies and set its real name, registration and base currency.
Generate a fiscal year. Nothing can be posted into a company until it has one. The year starts in the month set on that company, so two companies can close on different dates.
Build the chart of accounts. Start from a template or enter the chart your accountant gave you. Mark the control accounts for receivables, payables, bank, cash and tax while you are there.
Open the first period. Every period is created closed to posting and opened on purpose, on the company's fiscal calendar.
Add numbering and dimensions, if you want them. Numbering gives each kind of document its own sequence. Dimensions are cost centres, departments or regions, so you can report by them without creating an account for every combination.
Company or branch
A company is a legal entity that files its own return and signs its own accounts. A branch is not a company. The test: would it file its own return? If not, add it as a branch. Several shops or sites under one registration are one company with several branches, and each branch is also a Branch dimension value, so you can still report by branch.
Things that cannot be undone
Rule
Why
A company code is permanent
Exports, imports and links from other Apps match on it. The name can change freely
A base currency can only change before the first posting
Changing it under posted books would corrupt them
A company that has ever been posted to cannot be deleted
Archive it instead. Its books stay readable
A numbering counter cannot be edited
Moving it back creates two documents with one number
Who can see which company
An empty access list on a company means everybody can open it. Adding the first person to the list makes it restricted, so everybody not on the list loses it. Somebody without access does not see the company at all.
The chart of accounts
The chart is the list of things your business records money against. Start from one of the four templates, which are named after the shape of a business rather than a country, or build the one your accountant gave you.
Give an account a parent to group it. The parent becomes a heading and stops accepting entries of its own, so a balance is never counted twice.
One chart is shared by every company. That keeps a consolidated statement a sum. An account marked for one company only appears in that company's chart.
A group is not a parent. The parent is where a balance rolls up to. The group is the heading it prints under on a statement.
What you cannot change later: an account code once the account exists, an account that has been posted to (archive it instead), and the five classes: asset, liability, equity, income and expense. A template can only be applied to an empty chart.
Recording a journal entry
To record a journal entry, write a draft with a date and at least two lines, make the debits equal the credits, and press Post. Posting is the moment the entry becomes real.
Write the draft. The date decides which period the entry lands in, and that period has to be open when you post.
Watch the totals. The bar above the lines shows total debits, total credits and the difference, live. You can only post when the difference is zero.
Send it for approval, if your workspace works that way. Approval is optional and separate from posting. It records who agreed; it does not post.
Post it. The entry gets its number, the balances move, and it can never be edited again.
Three things that surprise people
A draft has no number. Numbers are handed out at posting, in order and with no gaps. A draft showing "not yet numbered" is working correctly.
A period has to be opened first. If a post is refused with "that period has not been opened yet", open it on the company's fiscal calendar.
A posted entry is corrected by reversing it. Reversing creates a mirror image entry and posts it, and both stay visible.
Why a post can be refused
The debits and credits do not agree.
The period has not been opened, or it is closed.
An account is a heading, archived, or not in this company's chart.
A required dimension value is missing on a line.
Doing several at once
Journal Batches groups drafts so a month end goes in as one act; each entry still faces the same checks. Recurring Journals is a template plus a schedule. It creates drafts by default, and posting automatically is a choice you make per rule.
Customers, suppliers, receivables and payables
Set up the counterparty, raise the document, settle it when the money moves, and work from Aging to decide who to chase and what to pay next.
Set up the counterparty. A customer or supplier needs a financial profile on the company: its control account, payment terms and credit limit.
Raise the document. A receivable is what a customer owes you. A payable is what you owe a supplier. Either one posts a journal the moment it is recorded.
Settle it. A receipt against a receivable, a payment against a payable. Settlement reduces what is outstanding and leaves the original figure alone.
Watch Aging. It buckets everything still open by how long it has been outstanding, as at a date you choose.
Worth knowing:
Receivables and payables are separate permissions, so the person chasing customers need not see supplier payments.
The customer record is shared with the CRM. Counterparties holds no name, address or email of its own. Rename a customer there and it is renamed everywhere.
The document you send a customer comes from the Invoicing App. This App keeps the accounting side: amount, due date, control account and what remains outstanding.
Writing off is its own permission, and only on the receivable side.
Billed shows how much you invoiced a customer over a period and how much came in. Written off has its own column and is never folded into settled.
Totals are per currency and never blended into one figure.
A statement can be produced for any counterparty: every document and settlement between you, in date order.
Bank, cash and payments
Record the bank accounts your money moves through, then reconcile them against the bank statement so your books and the bank agree.
Page
What it is for
Bank Accounts
The bank accounts your money actually moves through
Reconciliation
Match your books against the bank statement
Cash & Petty Cash
Physical cash and petty cash floats
Cash Counts
Count the cash and record what was there
Payment Requests
Payments asked for, waiting to be approved
Payment Runs
Pay many suppliers together in one run
Payments & Receipts
Money you paid out and money you took in
Transfers
Money moved between your own accounts
Cash Position
What the bank says, what the books say, and the gap
Bank statements and journals can be brought in from files on Import Data, under AI & Data.
Expense claims
Staff claim what they spent, an approver decides, and approving posts the expense to the books straight away.
Describe the kinds of spend under Expense Categories. Each category is a kind of spend and the account it posts to. Nothing is created for you.
Set limits, if you want any, under Policies & Limits. A limit either refuses a claim or marks it for the approver. Having none is a valid choice.
Somebody claims what they spent, one line per receipt, with the date it was actually spent.
An approver decides. Approving posts the expense, any reclaimable tax and what the business now owes the claimant. Paying them later settles that.
Worth knowing:
A claim becomes money owed when it is approved, not when it is paid, so your month end already includes approved claims nobody has paid yet.
Submitting, approving and paying are three permissions. They can be three people.
Seeing your own claims and seeing everybody's are different permissions.
A missing receipt is flagged, never refused.
A limit is never converted into another currency. It is reported as unchecked instead.
A cash advance is owed back, not spent. A claim can name the advance it settles, and only what is left over is reimbursed.
Tax
Set up the tax rates you charge and reclaim, then map them onto your return.
Tax Codes & Rates: the rates you charge and reclaim.
Tax Groups: codes that apply together.
Tax Exemptions: the customers and items that are not taxed.
Tax Return Boxes: map your tax codes onto the boxes of your return.
Tax Returns: prepare the returns you have to file.
Reports and statements
Run the trial balance first. If it balances, the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow built on it can be trusted.
Choose a period: an accounting period, or a date range of your own. The heading always states which one you asked for.
Check the banner. Total debits and total credits must agree exactly. If they do not, the report says so and names the entries involved.
Follow a figure to where it came from. An account code links to its General Ledger for the same dates.
Only posted entries appear in any report. Drafts and entries waiting for approval are left out on purpose, because they are not money that has moved. Exports are built on the server and hold the whole result, not just the page on screen.
The Reports Hub gathers every finance report in one place. Under Reports & Analytics you also find Period Comparison, Trends, Ratios, Top Movers, Metrics & KPIs, and customer and supplier analytics.
Closing a month and a year
Work through your checklist, revalue foreign balances if you hold any, run the checks, then soft close and close.
Work through the checklist. Mark the tasks that must be finished as blocking, and the close will refuse until they are done.
Revalue foreign balances. Revaluation posts the difference on foreign currency bank, customer and supplier balances as an unrealized gain or loss.
Run the checks. They measure without changing anything. The subledger check compares your control accounts with what your open documents add up to.
Soft close, then close. A soft close still lets somebody with the right permission post a late adjustment, on the record. A full close stops everything.
At year end, run Year End. It posts one journal moving profit or loss into retained earnings, then locks every period of the year. Read the preview first.
Period statuses
Status
Meaning
Not started
Exists in the calendar and has not been opened. Nothing can be posted
Open
Anybody with permission to post can post
Soft closed
Figures settled. A late adjustment is possible with a separate permission
Closed
Nobody posts into it. It has to be reopened first, with a reason
Authority Limits and Segregation of Duties record and report. They do not refuse anything yet, and each screen says so. The Audit Trail shows who changed what in the books, alongside sign ins and role changes from the platform.
Connecting your other Apps
Other Apps send their postings here, and you decide which account each one lands in. Invoicing sends sales invoices, Ecommerce sends orders, Point of Sale sends a till day, Asset Management sends depreciation and HR sends payroll.
Company Mapping: say which company each store, brand or entity posts into. Until you do, a posting waits; it is never dropped into whichever company is first.
Account Mapping: point every slot (receivable, revenue, output tax and so on) at an account. An empty required slot is the usual reason something has not posted.
Posting Backlog: see everything that arrived and what became of it. Fix the mapping, then Retry the row.
On the backlog, Retry replays what arrived, Reject means it will never post and needs a reason, and Reverse posts a second, reversing journal on a date you choose.
No account is ever chosen for you. A wrong mapping produces a balanced but wrong set of books, so suggestions are accepted one at a time by a person.
Fixed Assets here is the ledger side only. The Asset Management App owns the asset register and the depreciation runs and sends the resulting journal.
AI in this App
AI suggests and a person decides. Nothing the AI proposes reaches the books until somebody approves it.
Finance Assistant: ask questions about your own books and figures.
Unusual Entries: entries that do not look like the others.
AI Suggestions: entries the AI proposes, for you to approve.
Frequently asked questions
Does this replace the Invoicing App? No. Invoicing produces the document you send a customer. Accounting & Finance keeps the double entry books behind it, and both use one customer record.
The dashboard looks empty. Check a company is created and selected, that an open period covers the dates you expect, and that the entries were posted rather than left as drafts.
Can I edit a posted journal? No. Reverse it and post a corrected one. Both stay visible, which is what makes the ledger evidence.
Can I run more than one company? Yes. One workspace can run several companies, each with its own books, currency and calendar. Nothing is ever pooled across two of them, and Group Finance handles intercompany trading and consolidation.
Why are amounts in two currencies never added together? Because the sum would mean nothing. Every total is shown per currency.
Why can I see receivables but not payables? They are separate permissions. Ask your workspace admin.
Something here not matching what you see on screen? The screen is right and the guide is what needs correcting. Tell us and we will fix it.
