Bank and cash

What is there already

A new set of books arrives with a bank account, cash in hand, a credit card and an account for money received but not yet banked. Rename them to match what you actually have, and add more if you need them.

Adding an account

Bank and cash → Add an account. Name it, say what kind it is, and — the part people skip — give it an opening balance and the date that balance was true.

The opening balance is what was in the account on the day you started using Billkeep. Without it the books are correct about everything that has happened since and wrong about the total, which is the most confusing possible combination. It posts to an opening balance account so it never looks like income.

Recording a movement

Most money moves because of a document — an invoice paid, a bill settled — and those appear here on their own. Movements are for the rest:

• Money in that is not a customer payment: a refund, a grant, money you put in yourself.
• Money out that is not a bill: a standing order, a fee.
• A transfer between two of your own accounts — cash banked, money moved to a savings account.

A transfer is the one worth being careful about, and Billkeep is careful for you: you can only pick another account of your own as the other side, so moving your own money can never be recorded as income. That mistake is how a business talks itself into a profit it never made.

Bank charges

There is a shortcut for these on each account's page, because they are small, frequent and always go to the same place. It posts to the bank charges account and takes the money off that account's balance.

Squaring off a statement

This is the check that catches everything else: a payment recorded twice, one never recorded at all, a fee you did not know about.

1. Open the account and choose Square off a statement.
2. Put in the statement's date and its closing balance.
3. Tick every line that appears on the statement.
4. Watch the difference. Zero means your records and the bank agree.

When the difference will not go to zero

Work down this list; it is nearly always one of them.

• A payment recorded on the wrong account — check the account each one went to.
• A bank fee that is on the statement and not in Billkeep. Record it as a bank charge.
• The same payment entered twice, once from the invoice and once as a movement.
• The opening balance missing or wrong, which puts every reconciliation out by the same amount.