Finance

Finance

Chart of accounts, journals, banking, reconciliation, tax, and period close.

Finance is the scoreboard. It does not generate business activity — Sales, Purchases, People, and Operations do that. Finance receives everything those modules produce, validates it against double-entry rules, classifies it into accounts, and presents it as financial truth.

Your job in Finance is narrow but critical: ensure that non-document entries (adjustments, accruals, corrections, opening balances) are recorded correctly, and that the books are reconciled and closed every period.

Financial Close — the single home for closing the books: pick a month, work the eight-task checklist, then lock the period.

The Three Questions Finance Must Answer

Every business, every day, needs answers to three questions. Everything in the Finance module exists to answer them accurately and on time.

Question	Answer Source	Financial Statement	Key Equation
What do I have and owe?	Assets, liabilities, equity at a point in time	Balance Sheet	Assets = Liabilities + Equity
Did I make or lose money?	Revenue minus expenses over a period	Profit & Loss	Net Income = Revenue − Expenses
Where did the cash go?	Cash inflows and outflows over a period	Cash Flow Statement	Net Cash = Operating + Investing + Financing
Are my books balanced?	Total debits vs total credits across all accounts	Trial Balance	Total Debits = Total Credits
How has ownership changed?	Opening equity + income − drawings	Statement of Equity	Closing Equity = Opening + Income − Drawings

What Creates Journals

Finance does not originate transactions. Every document that carries money produces its journal the moment it is created; reports include that journal for as long as the document is active. Finance receives those entries. Manual journals in Finance exist only for events no other module handles.

Auto-generated journal sources

Module	Triggering Event	Debit	Credit
Sales	Invoice	Accounts Receivable	Sales (or the item's income account) + Sales Tax Payable
Sales	Receipt	Bank / Cash (net of any withholding)	Accounts Receivable
Sales	Sales receipt (cash sale)	Bank / Cash	Sales + Sales Tax Payable
Sales	Credit note	Sales + Sales Tax Payable	Accounts Receivable
Sales	Customer refund	Accounts Receivable	Bank / Cash
Purchases	Bill	Purchases (or the item's expense account) + Purchases Tax Recoverable	Accounts Payable
Purchases	Payment	Accounts Payable	Bank / Cash (net of any withholding)
Purchases	Debit note	Accounts Payable	Purchases + Purchases Tax Recoverable
Purchases	Vendor refund	Bank / Cash	Accounts Payable
People	Pay schedule approved	The expense account chosen per pay item	The liability account chosen per pay item
People	Advance (payment request)	Employee Advances	Bank / Cash
Operations	Stock adjustment	Inventory account / the account you pick	The account you pick / Inventory account
Operations	Depreciation run	The asset's depreciation expense account	The asset's accumulated depreciation account
Operations	Fixed asset disposal	Accumulated depreciation	Fixed asset
Operations	Production finalised	Output items' inventory accounts	Input items' inventory accounts + labour/overhead expense accounts
Finance (manual)	Accrual, deferral, provision, correction	Varies	Varies

Manual journals in Finance are the last resort, not the default. If a document in Sales, Purchases, People, or Operations can produce the entry, it must. Finance only handles what no other module can: accruals, deferrals, provisions, reclassifications, owner transactions, loan entries, opening balances of ledger accounts, and one-off items.

Two Posting Methods

Trabalance supports two approaches to recording cash movements. All non-cash transactions — invoices, bills, payroll, inventory, depreciation — post identically regardless of method.

Method	Trigger for Cash Posting	Reconciliation	Best For
Bank-Led	Bank statement arrives → import → reconcile the period → classify what the book never had	Built in — the reconciliation period is where matching happens	Accountants working from statements; simpler banking
Journal-Led	Receipts, payments and journals are posted as they happen	A reconciliation period per statement, matched against what is already posted	Real-time cash visibility; trained bookkeepers

Bank-led does not mean cash-basis accounting. An accrual-basis business can use bank-led posting. Invoices and bills still post when they are created. Only the timing of when cash hits the bank ledger differs.

Finance Module Topics

Chart of Accounts

The classification system for every debit and credit. Build it once — every report draws from it automatically. Covers account elements, the IFRS statement groups, system accounts, and custom accounts.

The Chart of Accounts page Account types & hierarchy System accounts Custom accounts

Journal Entries

The atomic unit of the financial system. Every financial event — sale, purchase, payment, depreciation, correction — becomes a journal entry. Covers the Journals page, manual and batch entry, auto journals and recurring schedules.

The Journals page Manual journals Reading a journal entry Reversing a journal Importing journals Auto-generated journals Recurring journals

Banking

One row per cash, bank and card account — book balance, the bank's own figure, and whether they have been proven to agree. Import statements, classify uncategorised money, split and move lines.

The Banking page Importing statements Classifying uncategorised money Converting bank lines to documents Bank rules Sharing lines for review Transfer & split

Bank Reconciliation

Prove the book against the bank for one statement period — auto-match, match the rest by hand, send what the book never had to Classification, then lock the period.

Reconciling a period How auto-matching works

Taxes

Define each tax code once — its type, rate or amount, base, and ledger account. The system applies it to documents and posts it; the Taxes page reads your position straight from the ledger.

The Taxes page Creating tax codes Withholding tax

Opening Balances

Bring in what customers owed you and what you owed vendors as Opening Balance documents, and the rest of the balance sheet as a manual journal against Opening Balance Equity.

Opening balances

Period Close

Financial Close lists the eight tasks for a month; the period-close wizard reviews the trial balance, takes adjustments, saves a snapshot and locks the period.

Financial Close — the month checklist Closing a period The account ledger Transactions

The Sacred Rule

🚨Finance is not modified to conform to other modules

Finance is the downstream consumer of every other module. The journal entries it receives are the output of Sales, Purchases, People, and Operations — Finance does not adapt its rules to accommodate upstream changes. If a change in another module produces incorrect journal entries, the fix happens in that module. The Finance ledger, account balance logic, and trial balance calculations are proven correct in production. No change to Finance is made to compensate for a problem elsewhere.

The Three-Way Consistency Rule is absolute: Trial Balance = Ledger Totals = Sum of Visible Transactions. These three must always agree. If they do not, the problem is in the data, not in the Finance module's calculation logic.

Chart of Accounts — the classification system every report draws from
Journal Entries — the Journals page and its tabs
Banking — every cash, bank and card account
Bank Reconciliation — proving book against bank, one period at a time
Tax Management — your position, read from the ledger
Financial Close — the month checklist and what blocks a lock
Period Close — the four-step wizard that locks a period