Turn on double entry accounting

There are two things called accounting in the sidebar, and they measure different things. The Account list, Money transfers and the Balance sheet beneath it read your payments, expenses, payroll, transfers and opening balances. The screens under Accounting setup read journal entries instead.

Every engine report is blocked until you have done this once. Opening one shows a panel titled Set up your accounting first with a button reading Set up accounting.

It is four steps, and your answers are saved as you go, so you can leave it and come back. Nothing is written to your books until the button on the last step.

• Business Type. Existing business if you have been trading and hold stock, unpaid invoices or unpaid bills. New business if you are starting fresh. Books open on is the day nothing before it is turned into a journal entry, and today is the usual answer.
• Certification. It reports what it checked, as Ready, Worth a look or Needs fixing, and asks you to tick that you have read the warnings.
• Opening Balance. It shows Cash and bank, Owed to you, Stock at cost, Owed by you, the totals, and the opening journal it is about to write. Read these figures before pressing Open my books.
• Complete. It confirms the date, the journal and who did it, and links to the trial balance, the general ledger and the sync queue.

In one step it creates a standard chart of accounts, works out what your business is worth on the day you chose, and writes a single balanced opening journal dated that day. It changes nothing outside accounting: no stock moves, no sale changes, nothing you already recorded is touched.

Undo the setup deletes that opening journal and closes the books again, and it is blocked once later journals exist. The chart of accounts, the record of who set it up and the sync queue all stay behind, so an undo leaves the books half set up rather than untouched.

• Trial balance shows every account with its debit, credit and balance, and states whether it is Balanced or Out of balance.
• General ledger covers one account at a time with an opening and a closing balance.
• Balance sheet, the journal version, shows assets against liabilities and equity, with the difference.
• Profit and loss shows gross revenue, contra revenue, net revenue and expenses.
• Cash flow statement shows opening cash, the three activity groups and closing cash.

The screens carry permanent notices about this, and they are worth reading before you rely on the numbers.

• No cost of sales is posted, so the profit and loss shows a higher profit than your real one, and the stock figure only ever grows.
• The sync queue lists records on their way into your journals. It says on screen that nothing is being queued yet, so a journal that fails to write is invisible there rather than shown as failed.
• Retained earnings are worked out from 1 January regardless of the financial year start you set.
• The warehouse filter on these reports leaves out payments, income, payroll, transfers and the opening journal.