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.
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.