Accounting
Terminology used
Books
Each year for a company is kept in a separate book. A book has its own set of accounts and entries. Permissions can be assigned as Object permissions for each book.
Accounts
In classical double-entry bookkeeping, each transaction involves at least two accounts, debit and credit.
Journal
The journal contains all transactions of a book. Once a transaction has been completed, it can't be changed. The only thing you can do is to cancel the transaction and enter a new one with the correct data. The cancelled statements will still be visible.
Stack
The stack is the accounting "sandbox", here you can record transactions without actually taking them into the journal. This allows for example the implementation of a 4-eyes-policy. People who are not accountants can book transactions into the stack and the accountant can verify them later and confirm them via a click of a button.
Bank account
The bank / PayPal / account is an account with an external company. Each transaction there relates to a transaction in the journal. Bank statements can often be obtained as text/csv files. By analyzing these files, the accounting feature allows automated imports of bank statements into the accounting system and facilitates booking large numbers of transactions.
Creating a book
Go to tiki-accounting_books.php (Menu entry follows when we are ready) and click on the tab "Create a book". Here you can enter the properties for the new book. Click on "Create a new book" to create a book.
Book properties
Choose a name for the book (I prefer having the year it is for in the name as well) and enter the first and last date for the journal. Only transaction with a date between those two dates can be booked.
Currency settings
In the currency settings, you can specify your currency, preferably using the ISO 4217 currency codes. But you can also use € or $ or any other currency symbol instead. You can choose, whether you want the symbol to appear in front of the amount, behind the amount or not at all. You can also specify the number of decimals your currency has. Most people will set this to 2, but there are currencies with no decimals at all. You must also specify the decimal point (. in the USA and many English based countries or , in Germany and other european contries) and the Thousands separator (, in the USA, . in Germany). As these are constantly leading to conversion errors when parsing numbers with php, this info is needed to prevent trouble.
CSV export settings
The CSV export settings specify the defaults used when generating CSV files (like journal exports or account lists). Even though CSV stands for comma-separated-values, european versions of common spreadsheet software use a semicolon as field separator (the US-versions usually go for the comma). Choose the settings here according to the requirements of your local software.
The separator is the character which is put in between the fields, it is usually a comma or a semicolon. The Quote text is placed before and after Text entries and the End of Line determines how a line is terminated (In the Windows world, you should use Carriage Return/Line feed which will also be tolerated on most *nix systems.
AutomTax
The setting Allow automatic tax calculation enables/disables this feature for the whole book. Leaving it on will not cause any automated splitting of your entries unless you specify the tax settings for the accounts.
What happens
After you created the book, it will show up at tiki-accounting_books.php under "My books". By the same time a new group accounting_book_<bookId> has been created and your user is a member of this new group. Also this group got all Object permissions assigned to it which are necessary to manage the book.
My books
The first tab "My books" on tiki-accounting_books.php shows all books you have access to. By clicking on the ID or name of the book, you can open the main accounting page for this book.
The main accounting page
This is the dashboard for your work in the current book.
General
This page gives you an overview over the current book and the tasks you can perform.
Accounts
Here you can see a complete list with all the accounts you have defined so far. You can edit the accounts and create new accounts here. You can also export the account list as a CSV file.
Create an account
Go to the "Accounts" tab on the main accounting page of your book. There you can click on the button "Create new account".
Each account needs a unique account number (in this book of course) and should receive a short but descriptive name. Longer Explanations can go into the notes field. The notes will be visible as popup in the quick pick lists in the booking form.
If you plan your costs and revenues in advance, you can enter the calculated budget in the budget field. Use the Decimal point you specified when creating the book if you want to enter numbers with decimals.
If you declare an account as locked, it can't be used. As you can't delete old accounts if you already used them in a transaction, this setting can be used to make those accounts disappear from the list of accounts in the booking mask.
Book a transaction
By clicking on the button "Book new entries" on the main accounting page for your book, you can open the actual Booking form. Transactions booked here go straight into the journal and can't be altered any more (except for cancelling).
You must enter a valid booking date and a description for the transaction. When entering the amount in the "Post" fieldset it will automagically (via JavaScript) be copied to the "Debit" and "Credit" fieldsets. You can choose the Account on debit and credit side either via the dropdown or you can click in the dropdown field and then choose the account number from the list of accounts to the right (JavaScript).
By clicking the "book" button, the transaction will be booked and shows up in the journal below the form.