Company Windows

Accounts Windows

Money Windows

Sales & Purchases Windows

Contact Management Windows

Expense Accounts

The Expense Accounts window lets you divide up the different ways in which your business spends money. The list shows you the balance for each account or, in other words, how much money has been spent on a particular area since the start of the current financial year.

If you are new to book-keeping, you may be confused about how the word 'account' is used when talking about income and expenses. The word is not meant to indicate that it is like a bank account, it is just a term that is used when describing how things, such as ways of spending money, are divided.

In theory you could have just a single account, perhaps named 'Work Spending', to show where you spend your money. However, that would be a bad idea when you try to look at how your business is performing. It's a much better idea to create a different account for each of the ways in which you spend money. Take, as a simple example, a gardener. A gardener could set up an account for money spent on advertising in the local paper, and another account for money spent on advertising with hand-delivered pamphlets. That way, it would be simple to see how much money is goes on the different methods of advertising. This information could then be used to decide if it's worth concentrating on one method of advertising.

Adding Accounts
If you wish to create a new account, click the New button to bring up the Edit Account window, as shown below.

This window will allow you to create the new account. You may use whatever name you wish, and whatever number you wish. However, you need to take account of how the number will be used. Numbers are used to set the order of the accounts in the list of Expense Accounts shown at the top of this page. This order is important because of the two types of account that may be created. There are Detail accounts and Total accounts. Detail accounts are used to divide up the ways in which the money is spent. Total accounts are used to add up the balances of the different Detail accounts above it in the list. Let's go back to the example given earlier of the gardener to see how this is useful. The gardener could advertise in different local newspapers, and use different delivery companies for the pamphlets. It would be useful to see how much money is spent on each newspaper, and how much is spent on each delivery company. So, Detail accounts would be set up for each newspaper and pamphlet delivery company and Total accounts for each of the different advertising methods. The numbers of the accounts would be chosen so that when they are listed in numeric order, each Total account adds up the appropriate Detail accounts, as shown below.

As well as deciding the name, number and type of account, you will also need to decide if you want the program to track VAT when you make an entry for a particular account.
 If you choose Yes, you will be able to choose a VAT code when you enter money spent, and the account will be included when producing a VAT report. It is important to remember that once you have made your choice, and have put at least one entry into the cashbook for the account, you are currently unable to change your mind about if that account should track VAT.

Editing Accounts
To display an account, click on its line in the list, and either press the enter key on the keyboard, or click on the Display button. You may change the name or number of the account, but if an account already has entries against it, you may not change its type, or status for VAT tracking.

Deleting Accounts
To delete an account, click on its line in the list, and click on the Delete button. You may not delete an account which already has entries against it.