Finance and Accounting overview
What the Finance module does, who uses it, and the key ideas behind the ledger, the controls and the other modules it connects to.
What Finance is for
Finance is the company's books. Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Payroll, Fixed Assets and POS all end up here as journal entries: sets of lines that debit and credit accounts for the same total. Finance also covers the work around those entries: receiving and paying money, matching the bank, closing the month, controlling credit, budgeting and reporting VAT.
Amounts are in AED unless the company uses another accounting currency. Foreign amounts are converted at an approved exchange rate.
Who uses it
- Accountants prepare entries, record payments, reconcile banks and run month-end tasks.
- Financial controllers approve, close periods and approve exchange rates.
- Collectors and credit managers chase overdue customers and decide credit overrides.
- Treasury staff register cheques, guarantees and letters of credit.
- Administrators set up accounts, taxes, journals and dimensions.
Key ideas
- Journal entry and journal items. The entry is the whole posting; its lines are the items. A posted entry cannot be edited. You reverse it.
- Journal types. Each kind of entry has its own numbering. Some can be typed by hand; others are written only by documents.
- Control accounts. Receivable and payable accounts belong to customer and supplier records, so a manual journal normally cannot touch them.
- Periods and the lock date. A period moves from Open to Soft closed, Closed and Locked. The lock date stops postings on or before it.
- Four-eyes control. The person who prepares something cannot approve it. The message begins "Somebody other than ...".
- Dimensions. Branch, cost centre, department, project and profit centre can sit on every line for reporting.
- Open items. What is still owed is worked out live from posted documents and the payments allocated to them.
How it connects to other modules
| Module | What Finance reads or creates |
|---|---|
| Sales and Purchase | Invoices and bills post here; Finance settles them. |
| Inventory | Stock movements post to inventory and cost accounts. |
| Fixed Assets | Capitalisation and depreciation post here. See Fixed Assets overview. |
| Payroll and POS | Their journals arrive through their journal types. |
Optional parts
Thirteen parts can be switched off for a company (budgets, collections, credit control, expected credit loss, disputes and write-offs, payment proposals, payment holds, treasury and cash forecast, exchange revaluation, accruals and deferrals, recurring entries, bank statements and reconciliation, distribution models). Journals and periods stay on. One administrator proposes a change and a different one approves it.
Start with Getting started with Finance.