Setting Up Accounting

Accounting is a paid add-on. Once your workspace has it, it stays off until an administrator turns it on. Enabling it creates a chart of accounts and sets the date your books start. From that date, new invoices, payments, bills, and other documents post to the ledger automatically. Nothing from before the start date is copied in; you bring in the balances you still need on the Opening balances page.

Enabling Accounting cannot be undone, so read this page before you start.

Before you start

Check these four things first:

The Accounting add-on. Owners and members with billing.manage add it in Billing → Subscriptions. Without it, Settings → Accounting and the Accounting workspace show Accounting is an add-on with a link to Billing.
Base currency. Set it under Settings → Finance → Currencies. The wizard reads it and it cannot be changed once your books have activity.
Who else needs access. Every member who uses Accounting, including you, needs an Accounting seat (see Member access). The owner gets one when the add-on starts.
Permission. You need the accounting.manage permission. Owners and admins have it by default. See Permissions.

Enable Accounting

Open Settings → Accounting → General, or open Accounting from the main sidebar and go to Accounting settings. If Accounting is not enabled yet, you will see the Accounting setup wizard. It has three steps, and nothing changes until you click Enable accounting on the last one.

1. Start date

Base currency is read-only. It comes from your currency settings and is permanent once Accounting is enabled.
Accounting start date is the first day your books cover, usually the first day of a month or fiscal year. It cannot be in the future.
Fiscal year starts is the month your financial year begins. It sets the yearly boundaries for reports.

Transactions dated on or after the start date post automatically. Invoices, bills, and payments dated before it are not posted.

If you choose a start date in the past, the wizard warns you: records already entered between that date and today are not posted when you enable Accounting. New records you enter afterwards with a date on or after the start date post normally. To get earlier activity into the books, use Opening balances.

2. Account mapping

The wizard shows where each kind of amount will post, for example Customer balances, Sales revenue, Output tax, Bank receipts, Inventory value, and Temporary Opening. The defaults come from the standard chart and are right for most businesses. Change a destination only if your reporting policy requires it. Each role only accepts an account of the matching type.

Temporary Opening is a clearing account used while you enter opening balances. It must reconcile to zero before opening balances are finished.

3. Review

Check the start date, base currency, fiscal year, and any changed account destinations, then click Enable accounting.

What happens when you enable

A default chart of accounts is created with five root groups (Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, Expenses) and the system accounts Workstation posts to, such as Cash, Bank, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Input VAT, Tax Payable, Inventory, and Retained Earnings. See Chart of accounts.
Payment methods are mapped: Cash and Other post to the Cash account; Bank Transfer, Credit Card, Check, and Online post to the Bank account.
A fiscal year calendar is created from the start month.
Accounting access is switched on for you (used only on older plans; on the current plans your Accounting seat already covers you).
New transactions begin posting automatically from the start date.

Next, open Accounting → Opening balances to bring in what you still owe and are owed, your cash, stock, and other balances as of the start date. See Opening balances.

Member access

An Accounting seat is what lets a member open Accounting. The add-on includes 3 seats; a fourth person is billed as an extra user. See Seats.

To give someone a seat, open Settings → Team, select Manage seats on their row, turn on Accounting under Add-ons, and select Save seats. Take the seat away the same way.

A member needs both the seat and a role that includes Accounting permissions. The seat opens Accounting; the role decides what they can do there. This applies to everyone, including the owner and Accounting administrators.

Without a seat, Accounting shows You don’t have an Accounting seat and tells them to ask an admin, and the server refuses Accounting requests.

Workspaces on older plans

Accounting isn’t part of the older Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans. If Workstation support has given your workspace Accounting, it covers everyone on your subscription, and a per-member Accounting access switch decides who uses it instead of seats. It is off for new members and switched on automatically for whoever enables Accounting. The owner and Accounting administrators (accounting.manage) don’t need it.

To turn it on, open Settings → Team, select the member, open the Point of Sale tab, and switch on Accounting access. Only owners and users with accounting.manage see this card. Every change is recorded in the audit log.

The General tab

After enabling, Accounting settings → General holds the company-wide options:

Setting	What it does
Number precision	Decimal places for Quantity and Unit price (0–9, default 4). Totals follow the currency; exchange rates keep 9 decimals.
Start date, Base currency	Read-only after enabling.
Fiscal year starts	Can change only until the calendar is in use. After that, create a transition fiscal year instead. See Closing the books.
Payment allocation	Automatic · Earliest due first or Manual. Controls how new payments are matched to open documents. See Payments.
Customer receipt routing	Direct to payment account (default) or Undeposited Funds. See Banking.
Deferred revenue	Auto for memberships or Manual only, prorated by days or months, plus Recognize through today. See Ledger.
Customer credit limits	Do not check, Warn before posting (default), or Block · Managers can override. See Sales.
Locked before	No postings or reversals may be dated before this day. See Closing the books.
Post scheduled entries automatically	Automatically, daily (default) or Only when I post them. Controls whether fixed-asset depreciation and prepaid expense recognition post on their own. See Scheduled entries.

Companies

Some organizations keep books for more than one legal entity, for example a company in Saudi Arabia and another in Jordan. Accounting supports this inside one Workstation organization.

Every organization starts with one group and one primary company. You never have to think about companies if you only have one.
A company (legal entity) has its own base currency, fiscal year, start date, transactions, numbering, and reports.
A group organizes companies and shares one chart definition. Groups cannot receive postings.

Customers, contacts, suppliers, and products are shared across the organization. Their accounting settings, such as payment terms or credit limits, are kept per company.

Add a company

Open Accounting settings → Entities and click New entity.
Choose Legal entity, pick its Accounting group, and enter a Code and Name.
Choose its Base currency and Reporting currency. Both must be active in your currency settings.
Set Fiscal year starts and the Accounting start date, then click Create entity.

A new company is enabled immediately, without the setup wizard. It gets its own copy of the group chart and fiscal calendar, and copies the primary company’s settings and account mappings. Base currency cannot change after the company has posted activity, and the primary company cannot be archived.

Accounts in the chart are shared within a group: adding, renaming, or removing an account applies to every company in that group, while each company keeps its own balances.

Switch company

When you have more than one company, a company selector appears in the Accounting header. Every screen, document, and report works on the selected company. Your choice is remembered in the browser. For group-wide statements, use the consolidated reports.

Company access

By default, a member with Accounting access can work in every company. To restrict someone, open Entities, click Access on a company or group, and assign members with a level of View, Post, or Manage. You can also mark a company as a member’s Default.

A member’s first assignment restricts them to the companies and groups they are assigned. Access to a group covers every company directly under it. You cannot save a change that would remove your own access.