Start here — your first day
If you are setting this up for the first time, watch these 9 in order. They cut across the sections below, because the order you learn in is not the order the menu is in. Everything else can wait until you need it.
- 1 Tenant settings — the handful of choices everything inherits Tell it your GST home state and currency — every tax split later reads these.
- 2 Chart of accounts templates — where this all came from Build a whole chart of accounts from your industry template in one click.
- 3 Fiscal years — the boundary your accounts are cut on Open the year you are trading in, so documents have somewhere to post.
- 4 Opening balances — the day you switch over Enter what the business already owned and owed on switchover day.
- 5 Vendors — who you buy from Add the suppliers you buy from, with the GSTIN that decides their tax treatment.
- 6 Customers — who you sell to Add the customers who buy on account.
- 7 Bulk import — a whole shop from a spreadsheet Load the catalogue from a spreadsheet instead of typing thousands of products.
- 8 Bank and cash accounts — where money actually sits Add the accounts money actually moves through.
- 9 The counter — ringing up a walk-in sale Ring up your first sale — and watch stock, GST and the books all move together.
Part 1 · Set your books up
Do these once, in this order, before you record a single transaction. Everything that follows reads what you decide here — the chart of accounts, who you trade with, what you stock and where the money sits.
Setup
The structure everything else is built on — account types, the chart itself, your fiscal year and the opening position you start from.
Chart of accounts templates — where this all came from
Fourteen ready-made charts, one per industry. This shop was set up from the grocery template in a single click, which is why it had sixty-four sensible accounts before anybody typed anything.
Account types — the five buckets everything falls into
Assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses. Every account you will ever create is one of these five, and the type is what decides which side of the ledger it increases on.
Account groups — how the chart stays readable
Groups are the shelves your accounts sit on: Bank Accounts, Current Assets, Direct Expenses. They are what turns a flat list of sixty-four accounts into a balance sheet somebody can actually read.
The chart of accounts — adding a ledger account
Sixty-four accounts covering a grocery, created from a template rather than typed. This is where you add the one it did not think of — and where the code, type and group you choose decide where it lands on every report from then on.
The account tree — the chart with its money in it
The same accounts as the list, drawn as the hierarchy they actually form, with the balance on each. It is the fastest way to see both the shape of your chart and where the money is sitting.
Fiscal years — the boundary your accounts are cut on
In India the books run April to March. The fiscal year is what tells the product where one year’s profit stops and the next begins, and it is what makes a year-end close possible at all.
Fiscal periods — locking a month once it is done
Each fiscal year is split into twelve months, and each can be locked. Locking is how you stop somebody back-dating an entry into a month you have already filed a return for.
Opening balances — the day you switch over
Every business that moves onto new books arrives with money already in the bank, stock on the shelf and suppliers owed. This screen is where that starting position goes in, and it is the single most important thing to get right at onboarding.
Journal types — labelling where an entry came from
Every posting the system makes carries a journal type: sales, purchase, bank, cash, adjustment. It is what lets you filter the general ledger down to one kind of activity instead of reading everything.
Customers & suppliers
Who you buy from and sell to. Every document points back to one of these, and their GST details decide how it is taxed.
Vendors — who you buy from
Every supplier you purchase from. Their GST details here decide the tax treatment on every bill you ever enter against them.
Pending vendors — the approval queue
When vendor approval is switched on, a new supplier waits here until somebody authorised signs it off. It is the smallest control in the product and it closes the largest hole a small business has.
Customers — who you sell to
A kirana sells mostly to walk-in cash customers, but credit customers — offices, canteens, societies — need a record.
Pending customers — the same guard, on the sales side
New credit customers can be held for approval before anybody sells to them on terms. On the buying side the risk is money going out; here it is goods going out and never being paid for.
Inventory
The catalogue, what is on the shelf, and what it is worth. Load it from a spreadsheet rather than typing it.
Brands and categories — how anyone finds anything
Two shelves of labels doing real work: they are how a shopper narrows down your online store, and how your own counter staff find one product among eight thousand. Rename one here and it updates everywhere — no item needs re-tagging.
Adding an item to the catalogue
The item record is the single source everything else reads: the price on an invoice, the HSN on your GST return, the stock figure on the shelf report, the photograph on your storefront. Fill it once, properly, and nothing downstream has to be re-keyed.
Bulk import — a whole shop from a spreadsheet
The screen that decides whether onboarding takes an afternoon or a fortnight. Item master, opening stock and party list all load from files, and nothing is written until you have seen exactly what would happen.
Locations — stock tracked per place, not in one pile
A shop floor, a back godown, a cold room. Once stock is held per location you can tell what is on the shelf as against what is in the store room, and move it between them on the record.
Stock on hand — what you own, and what it is worth
The stock register: every item, its quantity, its average cost and its value. The number at the top is the one your accountant asks for, and the check beside it is the one that says you can trust it.
Price lists — one product, several prices
The canteen buys at wholesale, the walk-in customer pays retail, and neither should require anyone to remember a discount at the counter. A price list attached to a customer picks the right price by itself.
Free-goods schemes — ten plus one, applied automatically
Distributor offers are how groceries actually make margin, and they are also how billing goes wrong. Record the scheme once and the free line adds itself on invoices and at the counter.
Batches and expiry — the report that saves a grocery money
Butter, milk, eggs and bread all carry a date. This screen holds every lot you have received with its expiry, so short-dated stock gets pushed before it is written off rather than after.
The reorder report — what to buy, before you run out
Items at or below the level you set, with a suggested quantity and the supplier you usually buy them from. This is the screen that turns purchasing from memory into a list.
Physical stock count — reconciling shelf against system
Once a quarter somebody walks the aisles with a scanner. What they count and what the system believes will differ, and the difference has to land in the accounts as shrinkage or recovery — not be quietly typed over.
Stock movements — the audit trail behind every number
Every unit that has entered or left, with the document that caused it. When a stock figure looks wrong, this is the screen that tells you why — and it is the proof that a bill really did land the goods.
Serial numbers and warranty tracking
Most of a grocery needs nothing like this. The moment you sell one appliance you need all of it — which unit went to which customer, on which invoice, and until when it is under warranty. Note the order: units have to be in stock before they can be given serial numbers.
Work orders — when you make something out of other stock
A grocery that packs its own dry fruit boxes, grinds its own masala or assembles gift hampers is manufacturing. Components come off the shelf, a finished good goes on, and the cost has to follow.
Banking
Your real accounts, the money moving through them, and proving the books agree with the bank.
Bank and cash accounts — where money actually sits
Every account you really hold: the current account, the till, the UPI settlement account. Each one carries its own running balance, and every payment you record has to name one of them — which is why each also has to be wired to a ledger account first.
Bank transactions — every rupee in and out of one account
The running record for a single account. Receipts and supplier payments land here automatically; anything the bank does to you on its own — charges, interest — you enter here directly.
Moving money between your own accounts
Cash drawn for the till, a sweep into the current account, a top-up of the UPI float. Money that never leaves the business still has to be recorded, or two accounts both look wrong.
Post-dated cheques — money promised, not money received
A cheque dated three weeks out is not cash and must not be treated as cash. This register holds every cheque you are sitting on and every cheque you have handed out, with the date each one comes alive.
Importing a bank statement instead of typing it
A month of bank lines is a long evening of typing and a guaranteed handful of mistakes. Download the template, paste your statement into it, upload — and let the product match what it can against entries you already made.
Reconciliation — proving your books agree with the bank
The one check that catches everything else: a payment entered twice, a cheque nobody banked, a charge you never saw. If these two numbers agree, the month is clean.
Part 2 · Everyday trading
The documents you will raise every day. Each one moves stock, money and tax together, so nothing downstream has to be re-entered or remembered.
Dashboard
Where the day starts.
The dashboard — where the day starts
Money in, money out, what is owed to you and what you owe, on one screen. It is not a report; it is the thirty seconds each morning that tells you whether today needs anything different from yesterday.
Point of sale
Billing at the counter — one tap for the invoice, the GST, the stock and the receipt.
The counter — ringing up a walk-in sale
Most of a grocery’s trade is cash at the counter, and none of it should require paperwork. Scan or tap the items, take the money, and one button does the invoice, the GST, the stock and the receipt together.
Purchase orders
What you have committed to buy but not yet received.
Purchase orders — committing to a purchase before it arrives
A PO is what you send the supplier, and what you check the delivery against when it turns up. Nothing has been bought and nothing is owed yet — but the commitment is on the record, so two people cannot order the same thing twice.
Payables — money out
Supplier bills, paying them, and sending goods back.
Entering a supplier bill
One document, three effects: the stock arrives on your shelves, the money owed appears in payables, and the GST you paid becomes input credit you can claim. Enter it once and none of those three has to be remembered separately.
Paying a supplier
Recording the payment is what closes the loop: the bank goes down, the payable goes down, and the bill stops appearing on your ageing as something still owed.
Debit notes — when you send goods back
Two tins of ghee arrived dented and leaking. You are not paying for them, and the GST you claimed on them has to come back off too. A debit note is how you tell your supplier and your return the same thing.
AP ageing — who you owe, and how late you are
Everything you owe, bucketed by how long it has been outstanding. It is the screen that decides what you pay this week, and the one that tells you whether your own credit terms are being honoured.
Vendor statements — settling an argument with a document
Every bill, payment and note against one supplier, in date order, with a running balance. This is what you send when their ledger and yours disagree.
Proforma & quotes
A priced offer that creates no receivable and no tax until the customer says yes.
Proforma invoices — quoting before you commit
A proforma looks like an invoice and behaves like nothing. No receivable, no GST, no stock movement — just a priced offer with an expiry date, which converts into a real invoice the moment the customer says yes.
Receivables — money in
Invoicing customers and collecting what they owe.
Raising a sales invoice
The document that creates the money owed to you, the GST you owe the government, and the stock coming off your shelves — all from one screen. Counter sales go through the POS; this is for customers who buy on account and pay later.
Receiving money from a customer
The other half of the invoice. Until a receipt is recorded the invoice keeps ageing, keeps appearing on the statement, and keeps accruing interest if you charge it.
Credit notes — cancelling part of an invoice properly
A customer returned goods, or you overbilled them. You do not edit the invoice — it has already been filed in your GST return. You issue a credit note, and both the money and the tax reverse on the record.
Delivery challans — goods out before the bill
Stock leaves on a challan when it is going out to be approved, to an exhibition, or for job work. The goods move and the paperwork travels with the van, but no sale and no GST has happened yet.
Sales orders — what has been promised, not yet billed
A confirmed order is a commitment on your stock before any invoice exists. Recording it means you can see what is already spoken for, rather than selling the same crate twice.
AR ageing — who owes you, and how late they are
The single most useful screen in receivables. Everything outstanding, bucketed by how long it has been sitting, so the phone calls you make today are the ones actually worth making.
Overdue interest — charging for late payment
If your terms say interest is payable on late settlement, this works out how much, per customer, per invoice. Most shops never charge it — but knowing the number is what makes the conversation possible.
Customer statements — the document you send to get paid
Every invoice, receipt and credit note against one customer in date order, with a running balance. Attach it to the chasing email and the argument usually ends there.
TDS receivable — tax your customers deducted for you
When a corporate customer pays you net of tax deducted at source, that deduction is not lost money — it is tax already paid on your behalf. This is the register of it, and it is what you set against your own liability.
Recurring documents
Invoices and bills that raise themselves on a schedule.
Recurring documents — the invoice that raises itself
Rent, a monthly supply contract, a maintenance charge — anything that happens on the same day every month should not need a person to remember it. A recurring rule raises the document on schedule and tells you it did.
Part 3 · Month end — GST, reports and the ledger
What you do once a month rather than once a day: file the return, read whether the business made money, and check the postings underneath when a figure looks wrong.
GST & tax
Returns built from the documents you already entered rather than typed in again.
Tax configurations — the GST slabs your prices hang off
Five slabs, created with the chart of accounts. Every item points at one of them, every invoice line inherits it from the item, and every return is built from what those lines add up to.
HSN codes — the classification your return is filed on
Every product has a code that says what kind of thing it is, and GSTR-1 is summarised by it. Getting it wrong is not a formatting error — it files your shampoo as cereal, and the return is still accepted.
Tax rates — splitting a slab into its components
A five per cent GST slab is really two and a half per cent CGST plus two and a half per cent SGST, each posting to its own ledger account. This is where that split is defined for the slabs that need it.
GSTR-1 — your outward supplies, built not typed
The return of everything you sold. It is assembled from the invoices already in the system, which means the only way to file a wrong GSTR-1 is to have entered a wrong invoice.
GSTR-3B — what you actually owe this month
The summary return, and the one that decides how much cash leaves your bank. Output tax on what you sold, minus input credit on what you bought, equals the payment.
GSTR-2B matching — checking your suppliers actually filed
The portal builds 2B from what your suppliers declared. Matching it against the bills you entered is how you find the credit you are claiming but cannot keep — because the supplier never filed it.
TDS return — tax withheld, in filing shape
The other tax a business handles: amounts deducted at source, either from you by customers or by you from contractors. This assembles them into what a return needs.
The tax calculator — CGST plus SGST, or IGST?
The single most common GST question a shop has, answered in one screen: whether a sale splits into central and state tax or is charged as one integrated tax. The answer is decided entirely by two state codes.
The tax ledger — every rupee of GST that moved
Output tax charged against input credit claimed, month by month, with the postings behind them. It is where you look when a return disagrees with your accounts.
Financial reports
Did the business make money, and is it holding together.
Trial balance — the check that everything adds up
Every account and its balance, debits in one column and credits in the other. If the two totals are equal, your books are internally consistent. It is the first report an accountant asks for and the fastest sanity check you have.
Profit and loss — did the shop make money
Income less cost of goods less running costs. It is the report everybody asks for, and the one most often misread — because a grocery’s profit hides inside a very small percentage of a very large turnover.
Balance sheet — what the business owns and owes
A photograph of one day: assets on one side, liabilities and equity on the other, always equal. Where the P&L says how the period went, this says what condition the business is actually in.
Cash flow — profit is not the same as money
Where cash actually came from and went. A shop can show a profit and still be unable to pay its suppliers, and this is the report that explains how.
Account ledger — one account, every movement
Pick an account and see every posting that touched it with a running balance. It is the report you use to answer "why is this number what it is" without reading the whole general ledger.
Day book — everything that happened today
Every transaction of a single day in the order it occurred. It is the oldest report in book-keeping and still the fastest way to check a day’s trading against what the till and the bank say.
Cash book — one bank account, in and out
Receipts and payments for a single account with a running balance. It is the shape a bank statement comes in, which is exactly what makes it the right report to reconcile against one.
AR ageing — the same question, from the reports desk
Who owes you and for how long, presented for printing and sending rather than for working through on screen. It is the version that goes to an accountant or a bank.
AP ageing — what you owe, in reporting shape
Everything outstanding to suppliers, bucketed by age. Read alongside AR ageing it answers the only cash-flow question that matters: is money arriving faster than it has to leave?
General ledger
The bottom of the stack: every posting the system has made, and the one place you write directly.
The general ledger — every posting the system has made
Each invoice, bill, payment and adjustment you have recorded ends up here as a balanced pair of entries. It is the full history of the business in one list, and it is what an auditor will actually read.
Posting a manual journal entry
The one place you write directly into the ledger. Most days you never touch it — but moving cash from the till to the bank, or correcting a misposting, has no document of its own, and this is how it gets recorded.
Journal entries — the ledger grouped by what caused it
The same postings as the GL, gathered into the journals they came from: sales, purchase, bank, adjustment. It is the view that answers "what kind of activity is driving my books" rather than "what happened on Tuesday".
Part 4 · Beyond the basics
Modules a growing business turns on when it needs them. None of these are required to run the shop — skip the ones that are not your business and come back later.
Expenses
Running costs and what staff claim back.
Expense categories — what staff are allowed to claim for
The list a claim form offers. Each category points at the ledger account its claims land in, so a reimbursement books itself to the right place without anyone choosing an account.
Expense policies — the limits, written down once
A cap per claim and a receipt threshold, per category. It turns "use your judgement" into a rule the system applies, which is fairer to staff and easier for whoever approves.
Expense claims — staff money out and back
Somebody paid for something out of their own pocket. The claim records what, under which category, and carries it through submitted, approved and reimbursed — so the money owed to your own staff is a tracked liability, not a note in a drawer.
Fixed assets
The long-lived things the business owns, and writing them down over time.
Asset categories — the depreciation rules, set once
A freezer and a laptop wear out at different speeds and get written down differently. The category holds the method, the useful life and the three accounts the arithmetic posts to — so registering an asset later is four fields, not a conversation with your accountant.
Registering an asset
The list of the long-lived things the business owns, what they cost, and what they are worth today. It is where an auditor starts, and it is what stops a ₹3 lakh freezer being written off as a shop expense in the month it was bought.
Running depreciation
The monthly job that moves a slice of every asset’s cost into the profit and loss. It is one click, it posts to the ledger, and skipping it is the most common reason a small business overstates its profit.
Loans
Borrowings and the EMIs that repay them.
Recording a business loan and its EMIs
A loan is not income and an EMI is not an expense — part of it repays what you borrowed and part is interest. Recording the loan properly is what makes every EMI split itself correctly for the next three years.
Budgets
What you planned, against what actually happened.
Setting a budget for an account
A budget is a number you commit to before the year starts, per account, split across twelve months. Without one, every cost looks reasonable in isolation and the year is over before anybody notices the total.
Budget against actual — the only budget screen that matters
Setting a budget takes ten minutes and does nothing on its own. This is the screen that makes it worth having: what you planned, what you have actually spent, and the gap, per account and per month.
Cost centres
Which part of the business is carrying which costs.
Cost centres — which part of the shop earns its keep
Fresh and dairy needs refrigeration, wastage and daily deliveries. Packaged grocery needs none of that. Tag spending to a cost centre and you can finally see which counter is carrying which costs.
Cost centre spend — where the money went
Spend per centre for a date range, split between the net cost and the GST you can claim back. It is the report that turns a vague sense that "fresh is expensive" into a figure.
Projects
Income and cost against one defined piece of work.
Projects — ring-fencing one job’s money
A shop that also takes on a contract — a canteen supply, an event, a new branch fit-out — needs to know whether that job made money on its own. Tag the invoices and bills to a project and the answer becomes a report instead of an argument.
Project statement — did this job actually pay?
Billed, collected and still due, per project, for one customer. It is the answer to the question every contract eventually raises: we did all that work, where did the money go?
Online store
Selling the same catalogue online — coupons, offers and gift cards that book properly.
The storefront key — connecting a shop front to these books
One key lets your online store read this catalogue, its prices and its live stock, and place real orders against it. Every sale the store makes lands here as an invoice, so the website and the accounts are never two separate truths.
Coupons — a code the shopper types
The discount a customer has to know about. Every redemption is validated against the rules you set here and booked on the invoice, so a promotion never quietly becomes an unrecorded margin cut.
Automatic discounts — no code required
A discount the store applies by itself when the basket qualifies. Nobody has to have heard of it, which makes it the right tool for "spend more, save more" and for free delivery thresholds.
Buy-X-get-Y offers on the shop front
The online twin of the counter scheme: buy two, get one free, applied at checkout without anybody typing anything. The free unit still comes off your stock, which is what keeps the margin honest.
Gift cards — money taken before anything is sold
A prepaid card is not a sale. It is cash in hand and a promise to supply later, which makes it a liability on your books until it is redeemed — and this screen books that correctly without anybody thinking about it.
Subscription billing
For anything charged on a repeating plan rather than per sale.
Billing plans — a price that repeats
A plan is a named recurring charge: what it costs and how often. Define it once and every customer put on it is billed the same way, so a price change is one edit rather than forty invoices.
Subscriptions — putting a customer on a plan
The link between a customer and a recurring price, with a start date. From here the invoices generate themselves on schedule, which is the whole reason to model it as a subscription rather than remembering to bill somebody every month.
Usage meters — charging for what was actually used
A flat plan does not fit everything. A meter charges per unit — per delivery beyond the included ones, per crate, per kilometre — and the usage you record against it becomes a line on the next invoice.
Tokens — a prepaid balance a customer draws down
Money taken up front against future supply. Like a gift card, it is a liability until it is used — and unlike a gift card, it belongs to a named account customer whose balance you can look up at the counter.
Phone scanner
Turning a staff phone into the counter barcode scanner.
Turning a phone into the counter’s barcode scanner
A shop does not need to buy scanner hardware to scan. Pair a staff phone with the billing counter and its camera becomes the scanner — the same barcodes, the same items, no cable and no purchase.
Part 5 · Administration and controls
Settings, the audit trail, and the controls you hope never to need. Worth watching once so you know what exists before the day you need it.
Administration
Settings, the audit trail, and the controls you hope never to need.
Tenant settings — the handful of choices everything inherits
Your GST home state, your base currency, your document numbering. Half a dozen fields that quietly decide how every invoice, return and report in the product behaves.
Custom fields — the one thing your business tracks that we did not think of
Every trade has a field nobody else needs. Rather than forcing it into the notes box where nothing can filter or report on it, add it properly to the document type it belongs on.
Sending invoices from your own address
Invoices and reminders can go out from your domain instead of ours. Customers recognise the sender, the mail is far less likely to be filtered, and replies come back to you.
Pending approvals — the queue that enforces two pairs of eyes
When approval is switched on for a document type, it waits here for somebody other than its author. It is the smallest control that prevents the largest category of small-business loss.
Closing checklists — month end without the panic
The same dozen jobs every month end: reconcile the banks, run depreciation, file the return, lock the period. A checklist turns that from something one person remembers into something anybody can finish.
Audit logs — who did what, and when
Every create, edit and delete in the system, with the user and the timestamp. It is not there to catch people; it is there so that when a figure changes, the question "who changed it" has an answer instead of an argument.
Job log — what the system did on its own
Recurring invoices generated, depreciation posted, payments voided. Anything that happened without a person clicking at that moment is recorded here, so automation is never a black box.
Integrity check — proving the books have not drifted
A read-only sweep that confirms every journal entry balances and every account balance matches the postings behind it. It changes nothing; it just tells you whether you can trust what you are reading.
Year-end closing — what happens when a year is shut
Closing a fiscal year locks every period in it and carries the balances forward. It is the right thing to do once, at the right moment, and it cannot be undone by clicking again.
The danger zone — and why it exists at all
One button that permanently deletes every accounting record this tenant holds. It is here for exactly one legitimate purpose, and knowing what that is matters more than knowing where the button is.
A note on accuracy
These were recorded on a live workspace, so the figures on screen are real rather than mocked up. Screens change as the product improves — where a video and the app disagree, the app is right.