Accounting

This covers the platform's internal cash accounts, recording expenses and other income, and the general ledger an accountant works in: the chart of accounts, journals between any accounts, accruals and prepayments, and loading opening balances.

Cash Accounts

A Cash Account is an internal ledger your institution holds — for example, a main vault or a mobile money till. These are exactly the accounts you pick from when disbursing a loan (as the Principal Account and, if applicable, the Loan Fees Account — see Loans), and they're also where expenses and other income get recorded against.

Cash Accounts are managed under Accounting → Cash Accounts. Everyone except Loan Officers can view them; creating an account, editing one, and making deposits/withdrawals is limited to Admin, Branch Manager, and Accountant roles.

Creating an account

Click Create Account and fill in:

• Account Name
• Opening Balance (optional, defaults to 0)
• Description (optional)
• Branches — which branch(es) this account is available to

Viewing balance and history

Open an account to see two tabs:

• Account Details
• Transactions — every movement through the account (manual deposits/withdrawals, loan disbursements, loan fee collections, payments received, penalties, expenses) in chronological order, each showing a running balance

From the account list, you can also make quick manual Deposit or Withdraw entries without opening the account, by filling in an amount, transaction date, description, and an optional reference number. You can attach files to a transaction afterward from its own Files tab.

Post To — what the money is for. A deposit or withdrawal also asks which account of the chart of accounts it belongs to: capital paid in, a loan received or income on a deposit; an expense, a prepayment or a supplier's bill being paid on a withdrawal. This is the other side of the entry in the general ledger. Leave it blank and the entry waits in Suspense until an accountant classifies it with a manual journal. Accounts that the loan book or the SACCO ledger keep (loans receivable, member savings, …) aren't offered. To move cash between two of your own accounts, withdraw from one and deposit into the other, choosing Transfers between cash accounts (clearing) on both: it nets to zero once both sides are recorded, and the Trial Balance flags a transfer with only one side.

Debits and credits. The account page speaks a teller's language — deposits and withdrawals, money in in green and money out in red brackets. Choose Show debits and credits above the table (the Cash Ledger has the same switch) for the accountant's view: a Debit and a Credit column as the institution's books record them — money into a cash account is a debit to it, money out of it a credit, the opposite of a bank statement — and a Posted To column naming the account on the other side of each entry. The choice is remembered in your browser.

Assets

An Asset is something your institution owns — office equipment, furniture, a vehicle, a computer, or a building. Assets are managed under Accounting → Assets. Everyone except Loan Officers can view the list; creating, editing, and deleting an asset is Admin-only.

Click Add Asset and fill in:

• Name
• Category — Office Equipment, Furniture & Fixtures, Vehicles, Computers & IT Equipment, Buildings & Property, or Other
• Description and Reference # (both optional)
• Purchase Date
• Purchase Cost
• Current Value — defaults to the Purchase Cost; update it by hand over time as the asset's value changes (there's no automatic depreciation)
• Notes (optional)

Only Active assets count toward the institution's books — mark an asset Disposed instead of deleting it once it's no longer in use, so its history stays visible. The Current Value of every Active asset feeds the "Fixed assets" line on the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance. There's no automatic depreciation: record it with a manual journal on Reports → Journal Entries.

Expenses

Go to Expenses to record and review money going out that isn't a loan disbursement — rent, utilities, salaries, and similar costs. Available to Admin, Branch Manager, and Accountant roles (deleting an expense is Admin-only).

Click New Expense and a side panel opens. Choose the Paying Account — only active accounts are offered — and the employee it's Recorded By (this defaults to you), then fill in:

• Category — a fixed list covering both everyday operating costs (Salaries & Wages, Rent, Utilities, Office Supplies, Travel, Professional Services, Bank Charges, Marketing, Depreciation, Other Operating) and tax categories (Income Tax, VAT, Withholding Tax, Other Tax)
• Amount
• Expense Date
• Description (required) — what the expense was for
• Payee, Reference #, Payment Method, and Notes (all optional)

Paid now or paid later. The Payment choice at the top of the panel decides how the expense is settled. Paid now is the usual case: it comes out of the Paying Account on the expense date. Pay later — bill received records a supplier's invoice you haven't paid yet (it sits in Accounts payable), and Pay later — accrued, no bill yet records a cost you've incurred before any bill arrives (it sits in Accrued expenses); both can have a Due Date. Either way the expense counts as a cost on its date, but no cash moves yet. When you pay, choose Pay on the row: pick the account, date and amount (all or part of what's owed) and the payment is recorded as a withdrawal from that account against the bill. The list shows each expense as Paid, Unpaid, Part paid or Overdue, and a Still Owed total. An expense with payments recorded against it can't be deleted. A prepayment — paying now for a cost that belongs to a later period — is a withdrawal posted to Prepayments, taken to expense later with a manual journal.

The Expenses list is scoped to your current branch, with search, a date-range filter, summary totals (including operating vs. tax split), and a CSV export. Use Edit on a row to reopen the same panel. If the account an expense was booked against has since been made inactive, the expense is locked and Edit is disabled.

On the account's own page (Cash Accounts) and on the Cash Ledger, an expense appears as its category followed by its description — for example "Rent - September office rent".

Other Income

Go to Other Income to record money coming in from something other than loan repayments — investment income, grants/subsidies, recoveries on written-off loans, or other miscellaneous income. Same access as Expenses (Admin, Branch Manager, Accountant; delete is Admin-only).

Click New Income and a side panel opens. Select the Receiving Account — only active accounts are offered — and the employee it's Recorded By, then fill in the Category (Investment Income, Grant/Subsidy, Recovery on Written-Off Loans, or Miscellaneous), the Amount, the Income Date, an optional Name/Source (defaults to the category if left blank), and a required Description.

Use Recovery on Written-Off Loans only for money that isn't recorded as a payment on the loan itself: a payment on a written-off loan is already counted as a recovery, and recording it here as well counts it twice (the Profit / Loss report warns when both appear in a period).

Membership fees received from group or SACCO members are recorded here too, as the type Membership Fees, when a payment is taken from the member's page. Those entries are counted against the member, so they cannot be edited or deleted here — reverse them from the member's fees instead.

The Other Income list works the same way as Expenses — branch-scoped, searchable, filterable by date, and exportable to CSV. An entry whose account has since been made inactive is locked and can't be edited, and on the account page and the Cash Ledger it appears as its category followed by its description.

The Chart of Accounts

Go to Reports → Chart of Accounts. It lists every account the general ledger can post to — whether or not anything has been posted to it yet — laid out as a tree. Everyone who can read the ledger (Admin, Branch Manager, Accountant, Auditor, Risk Analyst, Credit Committee, Viewer) can open it; Admins and Accountants can change it.

Headers and accounts. A header groups accounts — Cash and cash equivalents, with Cash at hand and Cash at bank inside it, and a bank account such as Cash at Stanbic inside that. Nothing is posted to a header; its balance on the Trial Balance is the total of the accounts inside it, and it adds nothing to the totals. An account is something you post to. Use New Header and New Account; each has a code, a name, a type (asset, liability, equity, income or expense), an optional description, and the header it is filed under. An account can only be filed under a header of the same type, and a code can be used once. An account's type, and whether it is a header, can't be changed once it exists, because journals may already have been posted to it.

Built-in accounts. The loan accounts (loans receivable, interest receivable, loan fee income…), your cash accounts, the expense, tax and other-income categories, Suspense and the clearing accounts are on the chart automatically, with fixed codes. Choose Edit on one to give it a code and name of your own and to file it under a header. This never changes what has been posted to it. A cash account takes its name from the account itself (Cash Accounts), so only its code and header can be changed here. Reset puts a built-in account back to its own code, name and place.

Retiring. An account you no longer use can be set to Retired: it can't be chosen for new entries, and what was posted to it stays in the books. A header can't be retired while it still holds active accounts. A header with nothing inside it can be removed.

Starter chart. Starter Chart adds the headers an accountant expects (Cash and cash equivalents with Cash at hand, Cash at bank and Mobile money; Loans and receivables; Current liabilities; Capital and reserves; Income from lending; Operating expenses; Taxes; and so on) and files the built-in accounts and your cash accounts under them. It is safe to apply twice: a header you already have is reused, and an account you have filed somewhere yourself is left where it is. Your cash accounts go under Cash and cash equivalents; move each into Cash at hand, Cash at bank or Mobile money with Edit.

Import a chart. Import reads a CSV or Excel file with one row per account or header and these columns (a sample file can be downloaded from the dialog):

Every row is checked first and nothing is added unless every row is right; the dialog lists each problem with its row number. A row that matches an account already on the chart (same code, name and type) is simply recognised, so the same file can be imported twice. Export downloads the whole chart in the same layout.

Journals between any accounts

On Reports → Journal Entries, New Journal Entry posts a debit/credit entry between any accounts of the chart — cash or not. The account list shows the whole chart grouped by type. Use it to reclassify an item out of Suspense, to take a prepayment to expense, to record depreciation, an accrual or a correction. A journal needs a date, a description and two or more lines whose debits equal their credits, and can't be dated on or before the day the books are closed through. Posted journals are never edited: Reverse one and post a new one. Posting and reversing are for Admins and Accountants, and a single branch must be chosen (the books are kept branch by branch).

Reverse automatically. Tick this on an accrual and choose the day it is taken back (it opens on the first of the next month). The ledger reverses it on that day, shown as an Auto-reversal line; nothing second is stored. If you reverse the journal by hand first, the automatic reversal is cancelled, so it is never reversed twice.

Recipes

• A cost incurred but not billed yet (accrued expense). Either record an expense with Pay later — accrued, no bill yet (see Expenses), or post a journal: debit the expense, credit Accrued expenses, ticking Reverse automatically for the first of next month. Record the real bill when it arrives, in the ordinary way.
• A supplier's bill. Record an expense with Pay later — bill received; it sits in Accounts payable until you pay it with Pay on the Expenses list.
• A prepayment. Withdraw the money with Post To → Prepayments. Each month, post a journal that debits the expense and credits Prepayments for the part that has been used.
• Capital paid in, or a loan received. Deposit it with Post To set to the share capital, equity or borrowings account (add one on the Chart of Accounts if you don't have it yet).
• Cash moved between two of your accounts. Withdraw from one and deposit into the other, choosing Transfers between cash accounts (clearing) on both. The Trial Balance checks that this account is zero; a transfer with only one side recorded shows up there.

Loading opening balances

When you start using the ledger, Opening Balances on Reports → Journal Entries loads your trial balance from a CSV or Excel file (a sample can be downloaded from the dialog). Choose the day the balances are as at, then the file, which needs an Account Code column and either Debit and Credit columns, or a Balance column with a Dr/Cr column. Every row is checked and listed with its problems; nothing is posted until every row is right.

Some balances are not taken from the file, because the system already works them out from its own records and would count them twice. A row for one of these is refused and says where to enter it instead:

• Cash accounts — the opening balance is entered on the cash account itself (Cash Accounts).
• Loans receivable, interest and fees receivable, allowance, client overpayments, interest received in advance, disbursement clearing — import the loans and the ledger follows.
• Fixed assets — record the assets on the Assets page.
• Member savings and share capital (SACCO) — import the members' balances in the SACCO workspace.
• Income and expenses of the loan book — for a start part-way through the year, put the profit brought forward into Retained earnings instead.
• Opening balance equity and Suspense — calculated by the ledger.

What is left rarely balances by itself, so the difference is taken up in Opening balance equity, shown before you post. The balances post as journals referenced OPENING (a long file is split into several balanced journals) and can be reversed like any other journal. Afterwards check the Trial Balance: Opening balance equity should hold only what is still unexplained. If opening balances have already been posted for the branch, the dialog warns before a second file adds to them.