Financial accounts are the places your money lives: checking, savings, and anything else you track. From the register, open the gear menu and choose Manage accounts to see them all, grouped into cash, assets, and liabilities, with your cash on hand and net position at the top.
Adding an account
Click Add → Manual account. (Choose Bank connection instead to set up a bank feed.) Then fill in:
- Name, e.g. “Chase Checking”
- Account nature: Cash / bank, Asset, or Liability (see below)
- For a cash account: the type (Checking, Savings, or Other), the last 4 digits, whether it’s the default account, and the next check number if you print checks
- An optional opening balance
Account natures
- Cash / bank is a real account at a bank. Only these reconcile against statements and can connect to a bank feed.
- Asset is something of value that isn’t cash in the bank, like money a payment processor is holding for you.
- Liability is money you owe or are holding to pass along, like dues collected for a parent organization. Its balance shows as Owed.
Balance sheet
The same page is your balance sheet. Set As of to any date to see what each account held then, and what the organization was worth. Download it as a PDF or CSV from the Download menu.
A second column compares each balance against the day before your fiscal year started, with the change beside it. It appears once there is history to compare against.
Net position is your cash and assets minus what you owe. Archived accounts count when they still hold a balance.
Trial balance
A trial balance lists every account with a balance, in debit and credit columns that add up to the same number. Accountants usually ask for one at tax time. Set As of to the date you need, then choose Trial balance from the Download menu.
Bank, asset, liability, and equity accounts are cumulative through that date. Income and expense categories cover your fiscal year to date, with everything earlier folded into a Prior years’ net line.
A category’s total here can differ from the same category on the Budget Report. This report follows the ledger, so it counts money that actually moved. The Budget Report follows requests, so it also counts adjustments that never became a payment.
Opening balance
Set the opening balance when you create the account: what the balance was on the day you started tracking it in Books, and the date it was accurate. Leave it blank if there’s nothing to carry in. You can adjust it later from the register.
Default account
The default account is preselected when you record deposits, journal entries, and expense payments. You can have one default, and only a cash account can be it.
Archiving and deleting
Archive an account you no longer use to tuck it away while keeping all its history. Restore it any time from the Archived section. An account with no transactions can be deleted outright.