Money and the account
The books
Menu: Reporting → Reports → Books · Money → Journal · Setup → Chart of accounts Who: the owner, and anybody the owner gives May read the books to. The chart of accounts is the owner's alone
Sellify has always known, to the paisa, what a shop sold, what it bought, what it is owed, what it owes and what it spent — five ledgers, each the truth about its own thing. What it never had was one place where those five meet.
This is that place. It is a double-entry general ledger that Sellify writes itself: every sale, every delivery, every payment, every bill and every drawer count posts to it at the moment it happens, so the books cannot say the shelf moved when the shelf says it did not.
The books are a package option. If you cannot see Books under Reporting, it is not in your plan.
Before anything posts: say when the books begin
Setup → Settings → Accounting → These books begin on
Nothing is posted before that day, and nothing is backfilled. A company switching this on has a year of trading behind it, every day of it closed and locked — posting against those days would move figures on Z reports you have already printed and filed.
What came before arrives as one opening journal somebody enters and signs off: what the shop was worth on the day its books began. Until that is entered you will see the shelves reading the wrong way round on the trial balance — the stock was bought before the books existed, so nothing ever put it on them.
Leave the date blank and nothing posts at all, which is what every company starts on.
The chart of accounts
Setup → Chart of accounts — the owner only
Every company starts with a full chart — cash, the bank, the shelf, what you are owed, what you owe, sales, the tax, cost of sales, wastage, and one account for every expense head you keep.
Some of them are the ones Sellify posts to itself, and the screen says so on the row. You can rename any of those — "Stock in hand" and "Inventory" are the same account and you should read your own words for it — and you cannot delete one or turn it off. A posting rule pointing at nothing is a sale that cannot be rung, at a till, with a customer standing there.
New account adds a head of your own: a name, and what kind of account it is. A code is optional — leave it blank if your chart does not number its heads.
Three things the screen will not let you do, each for the same reason:
- Change what kind an account is, once anything has been posted to it. Which way an account reads, and which statement it lands on, are both decided by its kind — so moving one would re-sign every figure ever read off it, including on months you have printed and filed. Open a new head and move the balance across with a journal.
- Delete an account with entries against it. Turn it off instead: it comes off the pickers that file something against it, and everything already posted to it keeps its filing. (A trial balance is the sum of every account, so one that quietly took its lines out of the list would not balance.) The journal still offers it, marked turned off, so a balance left on it can be moved somewhere else.
- Turn off or delete an account Sellify posts to. Rename it.
Writing a name you retired earlier brings that account back, with everything that was on it — the same promise a supplier, a promo code and a stock item already make.
Your expense heads are your P&L accounts. Add a head under Setup → Expense categories and it gets an account; a head with none still records the bill and puts it under Other expenses, where you can see at a glance that somebody has not finished the setup.
The journal
Money → Journal
Every entry in the books, newest first, with the date, what it was, whether it was typed by hand or posted by a document, and what it came to. Open one to read both columns.
Almost every row is a document's: a sale, a delivery, a bill, a supplier paid, a drawer counted at closing. The Posted filter is how you find the other kind.
Typing one
New entry is for what no other screen in Sellify owns — the owner's drawings, an accrual, a prepayment, the opening balance. (Depreciation is not one of them any more: register what the shop owns under Money → Assets and Sellify posts it every month by itself — see the What the shop owns chapter.) It takes a date, a note, and two or more lines, each a debit or a credit.
The form adds your columns up as you type and will not let you post until they agree. The account picker offers only the heads a journal may reach: everything Sellify posts to itself is left out, because a journal put over the top of a sale would be a second answer to what that sale was, and nothing in the product could then say which was right. Correct the document and the books follow.
A head you have turned off is still offered, marked, because that is exactly what you need on one side of the journal that moves its balance away.
Getting one wrong
A journal is never edited and never deleted — a set of books is a history, and a row somebody can rub out is not one.
Reverse writes a matching entry with every figure turned round, on the original's own date, and both stay on the page. That is why it is dated backwards rather than today: a mistake and its correction belong on the day the mistake was made, or a month you have already filed stays quietly wrong while the next one carries a figure nothing in it explains.
There is no Reverse on an entry a document posted. Correct the document.
The opening balance
The one entry every company that switches the books on has to type, and the one place Opening balance equity may be used.
It covers everything the business already had that morning: the fixtures, the shelving and the van, and also the money in the bank, the stock on the shelf, what your customers owed you and what you owed your suppliers.
Date it the day your books begin — the date you set in Settings. That one date is what lets the entry reach accounts Sellify normally posts to itself, because nothing has posted to them before it and there is nothing for it to disagree with. Dated any other day it is an ordinary journal, and those accounts are refused with a message telling you which date to use.
The other side of every line is Opening balance equity.
Two things it will not take, and both are deliberate. It will not take Sales or any other income or expense head: a set of books opens with what you HAVE and OWE, and what you earned before is already inside the opening equity figure. And it does not stop you typing an ordinary journal on that same day — an accrual dated the first of April still works exactly as it would on the second.
Trial balance
Every account, the balance it holds, and the one thing that matters: the two columns come to the same figure.
It is as at a day rather than for a period, so the report reads the END of your date range and ignores the start. And it is the whole company, whichever branch is in the top bar: a set of books belongs to one business, and narrowed to one shop the two columns simply differ.
Out of balance should read nought, always. Sellify refuses an unbalanced entry at the moment it is written, so the figure is printed not because it is expected to move but because a report that only speaks up when something is wrong is a report nobody trusts when it says nothing.
General ledger
One account's own statement: what it held before the range, every line that touched it, and what it holds at the end. Pick the account from the box on the form.
This one does follow the branch in the top bar, unlike the two above it. A drawer is a thing standing in one shop, and "Cash in till" across four branches is four drawers added together, which is a figure nobody counts.
A retired account is still in the picker. It holds everything ever posted to it, so you have to be able to open it.
Income statement
Income and expenses off the general ledger, for the range.
You now have two profit figures and they answer two different questions. Money → Profit & loss reads your sales, your shelf and your bills directly — it needs no chart of accounts and no start date, it is available to every shop from day one, and it is the page to open on a Sunday. This one reads the books, and it is the page an accountant signs.
They should agree. Where they do not, the next report says why.
Balance sheet
What the business is worth, as at a day. Assets on one side; what you owe and what the owner has in it on the other. As at a day and the whole company, for the same two reasons the trial balance is.
What the business has earned is worked out rather than posted, as two lines: Retained earnings brought forward (every earlier financial year) and Profit for the year (this one so far). No closing journal is ever run — Sellify reads the year off the books when you ask. Without the two lines the halves would differ by exactly your own profit. The Closing a month, and the year chapter covers the year end.
Cash book
The till, the box and the bank, day by day, with what was in hand before the range and a running total down the side. Three piles because that is how money actually leaves a shop: the sabzi wala at the door out of the drawer, the plumber out of the manager's box, the landlord by transfer.
Money a salesman is carrying on his round is not one of these columns. It is the shop's money and it is in nobody's drawer until he hands it in — Credit → Collections is the page that reads it.
Books reconciliation
The most useful page here, and the reason two profit figures are allowed to exist at all: where the trading figures and the books disagree, line by line.
Revenue, cost of sales, wastage, expenses — each read both ways, with the difference beside it. A difference is a list of what has not been posted.
Every one of those four should read nought, and one that does not is worth chasing: it means something happened that the books have not been told about.
This page used to say the opposite — that two rows would never agree and neither was a fault. It was an honest description of a page that could not keep its own promise, and the answer was to make the two sides count the same thing. Revenue now takes your sales returns off on both sides; wastage now counts what a stock count came up short by on both sides. Nothing about the books moved: the Profit & loss page was the one that was reading a line short.
In the books only is the last line, and the table under it names the
accounts: the drawer's over/short and the rounding paisa are real figures in the
books that the operational reports have no line for at all. The trading column
there reads 0.00 rather than a dash, because that figure is not unknown — it is
known, and it is nothing.
Who may read them
The owner, always. Anybody else needs May read the books, which the owner ticks on their row under Setup → Users.
A branch manager does not get it by position, unlike setting a price at the till. There is no outlet-sized answer to "what is the trial balance": a set of books belongs to the whole company. An owner who wants their manager or their accountant to read them gives them the grant.
A cashier, a waiter and HR never see any of it, and the menu does not offer it to them.
What the books do not do yet
- No closing journal at year end. The year is read off the books rather than swept into equity, and a filed month is locked on Money → Periods — see the Closing a month, and the year chapter.
- No second currency and no payroll posting. (The fixed-asset register is here now — see What the shop owns.)
Bank statement matching is here now — Money → Bank reconciliation. Import the CSV your bank exports, say which column is which, and Sellify puts what the bank said beside what the shop wrote down: every line you match, and the difference at the foot closing as you work. A charge nobody recorded is written into the books from that screen, under whatever head you pick. The Bank reconciliation chapter covers it step by step.