Getting Started with Accounting & Financial Management

AccuArk's Accounting module provides a full double-entry bookkeeping system built directly into your business management application. This guide walks you through every feature and the best order to set things up.

Feature Overview

The accounting system covers the complete financial management lifecycle:

• Chart of Accounts — A hierarchical list of every account in your general ledger, organized by class, type, and optional parent-child relationships
• Account Transactions — View, create, edit, and delete transactions for any account with running balances, date filtering, and pagination
• Manual Journal Entries — Create multi-line journal entries that must balance before saving, with automatic transaction numbering
• Recurring Journal Entries — Set up templates that automatically generate journal entries on a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually)
• Financial Dashboard — An executive-level overview showing cash position, accounts payable and receivable summaries, profit and loss snapshot, recent transactions, and bill alerts
• Trial Balance — Verify that your books balance with a debit and credit summary of all active accounts
• Profit & Loss Statement — View revenue, costs, and expenses for any date range to see your net income
• Balance Sheet — See your assets, liabilities, and equity as of any date with automatic balance verification
• AP Aging Report — Track outstanding vendor bills grouped into aging buckets (current, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, and 90+ days)
• AR Aging Report — Track outstanding customer invoices using the same aging bucket structure
• Accounting Periods — Define fiscal periods and close or lock them to prevent changes to historical transactions
• Transaction Audit Trail — Every transaction records a complete history of who created, modified, or deleted it and what changed
• Account Balance Repair — Recalculate stored balances from the transaction history when discrepancies are detected
• Multi-Location Support — Filter every report and transaction view by location to see financials for individual stores or the business as a whole

Recommended Setup Order

Follow these steps for the smoothest experience:

1. Verify Account Classes — AccuArk ships with five standard account classes: Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, and Costs/Expenses. These are preconfigured and should not need changes.
2. Review Account Types — Each class contains types (for example, Current Assets, Fixed Assets, Long-Term Liabilities). Review them under Business > Account Types and add any custom types your business needs.
3. Build Your Chart of Accounts — Open Business > Chart of Accounts and create accounts for your general ledger. Start with your bank accounts, accounts receivable, accounts payable, revenue accounts, and primary expense accounts.
4. Set Up Accounting Periods — Define your fiscal periods (monthly or quarterly) under Business > Accounting Periods so you can close books at the end of each period.
5. Assign Permissions — Make sure users who need accounting access have the appropriate FIN permissions assigned to their roles. The Accountant role comes preconfigured with all financial permissions.
6. Enter Opening Balances — Create a journal entry to record your opening balances as of your go-live date.
7. Create Recurring Journals — If you have monthly entries that repeat (depreciation, prepaid expense amortization, rent allocation), set them up as recurring journal templates.
8. Start Recording Transactions — Begin entering daily transactions. Many transactions are created automatically when you process invoices, receive payments, or pay bills.
9. Review Reports — Use the Financial Dashboard for a quick overview, then drill into the Trial Balance, Profit and Loss, and Balance Sheet for detailed analysis.
10. Close Periods — At the end of each month or quarter, close the accounting period to lock the books and prevent accidental changes.

Quick-Start Checklist

If you need to get accounting running fast, the minimum steps are:

• Verify the default Chart of Accounts has the accounts you need (add any missing ones)
• Enter an opening balance journal entry
• Assign the Accountant role to your bookkeeper
• Start recording transactions

You can always add more accounts, set up recurring journals, and configure periods later. AccuArk is designed to let you start simple and build out over time.

Navigating the Accounting Menu

All accounting features are accessible from the Business menu in AccuArk's main window:

• Business > Chart of Accounts — Opens the hierarchical account list
• Business > Journal Entry — Opens the manual journal entry form
• Business > Recurring Journals — Opens the recurring journal template list
• Business > Accounting Periods — Opens the period management form
• Business > Bills — Opens the vendor bills management form
• Business > Financial Dashboard — Opens the executive dashboard
• Business > Trial Balance — Opens the trial balance report
• Business > Profit & Loss — Opens the income statement
• Business > Balance Sheet — Opens the balance sheet report
• Business > AP Aging — Opens the accounts payable aging report
• Business > AR Aging — Opens the accounts receivable aging report