Understanding your books

Turning them on

Billkeep opens in Simple mode, which shows invoices, money out, clients, bills and suppliers — and not the books. That is deliberate: most people never need to look at a journal, and putting one in front of somebody on their first day helps nobody.

Settings → How much of it you see → Pro. The sidebar gains Bank and cash, Purchase orders and a Books group.

You are revealing them, not starting them

The books are kept in both modes. A chart of accounts is created with your business, and from your first document onwards every invoice, payment, receipt and bill posts itself whether or not you can see it happening. So a report you open on the day you switch covers every invoice you have ever written — there is no gap where Simple mode was on.

The same goes for records that predate the books entirely: they are brought in the next time you open the app, and nothing is ever posted twice.

Where things are

On a wide screen these live in the sidebar under Books and What you owe. On a phone the sidebar is not there, so go to Settings → Books and money, which lists all of them.

Reports — the six financial statements.
Chart of accounts — the categories every figure lands in.
Journal — every posting, newest first.
Currencies — the exchange rates used to convert into your own currency.

Reading a profit and loss

It answers one question: over a period, what did you earn, what did it cost, and what is left. Income at the top, cost of sales next, then expenses, and the profit at the bottom.

Two things surprise people the first time:

It counts invoices, not payments. An invoice you finished in March is March's income even if it is paid in June. That is what an accountant expects, and it is why a profitable month can still be a month with no money in the bank.
Tax is not income. Tax you charged a customer is money you are holding for a tax authority, so it never appears as revenue. It is on the tax position report instead.

Reading a balance sheet

A snapshot rather than a period: what you own, what you owe, and the difference, as at one date. The two sides always agree — if they ever did not, that would be a bug, which is why the difference is shown on the page rather than hidden.

This year's profit is separated from every year before it. Where the split falls depends on when your financial year starts, which is under Settings → Numbering and tax policy. January in most places, April in the UK and India, July in Australia. Set it once.

The trial balance, and why it is there

Every account with a debit column and a credit column, and the proof that the two totals match. Most people never need it. An accountant will ask for it first, because it is the one page that shows the books are sound before anything is read out of them.

Where a figure came from

Every report is read out of the journal rather than kept beside it, so a number on a report can always be traced. Open the Chart of accounts, pick the account, and you get every entry that made its balance. From an entry you can see both sides of the posting and what produced it.

Plain words, formal words

Every account is named in plain English — Money owed to you rather than Accounts receivable — with its formal type shown beside it. Both are on the page on purpose: the plain name is for you, the formal one is for whoever you hand the report to.

Writing your own entry

Journal → Write an entry. This is for the things no document covers: depreciation, an adjustment your accountant asked for, money you put into the business yourself. Debits and credits have to match before it will post, which is the whole safety net.

Nothing here is edited or deleted

A wrong entry is reversed — Billkeep posts the mirror image, dated when you noticed, and both stay on the page. That is not an inconvenience, it is the point: a ledger you can quietly rewrite is a ledger nobody can file from.

What the books are not

They do not submit anything to a tax authority.
They are not a substitute for an accountant — they are a good way to arrive at one prepared.
They are in the browser version today. The Android app shares the same records, and the postings are derived from your documents, so books kept on the phone all week are waiting the moment you open a browser.

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