Finance

Finance tells you who owes what and how the business stands, for each legal entity you run. Finance is early: it covers billing and the general ledger, and more is coming.

How work moves

Each legal entity keeps its own books. Before an entity bills, it needs a book, ledger accounts, and a customer account for each company or person it bills.

Then money moves through two Documents:

1. An invoice bills a customer. Issuing it posts what the customer owes to the general ledger.
2. A payment records what the customer paid and applies it to their invoices. Receiving it posts the deposit to the general ledger.

Each posts its own entries to the general ledger. You add journal entries by hand for anything else, such as payroll. A book's Statements read the general ledger: balance sheet, income statement, and trial balance.

Metrics

Finance adds two metrics under Metrics: Revenue and Expenses. Each is a sum of the general ledger, so you can open the records behind any number.

What Continual does here

When Continual works for an accountant, it keeps the books with them:

• Draft invoices. It drafts an invoice for a customer of the entity that sold, one line per thing billed. It leaves the invoice a draft for an accountant to issue, unless you ask it to issue it.
• Record payments. It records a payment a customer made against the invoices it pays, and leaves it a draft for an accountant to receive, unless you ask it to receive it.
• Prepare to chase a payment. It reads the invoice and the customer's other open invoices, and names the amount, the due date, and how late it is.
• Read the books. It reads balances and statements from the ledger instead of adding up entries, and says which book and date it read.

Continual uses these only for a person who holds the Accountant role.

• What does Atlas Cold Chain owe us, and how late is it?Copy
• Show me this month's income statement for Kestrel Labs, Inc.Copy
• Which customers owe us more than $50,000?Copy

Who can do what

Finance adds two roles, which an administrator gives in Members:

• Accountant keeps the books: books, the chart of accounts, journal entries, invoices, payments, and exchange rates. Accountants issue, receive, void, post, and close periods.
• Finance viewer reads the books and their statements and changes nothing, such as an auditor or an investor.

Members without either role see no journal entries, books, or payments, and no invoices unless they are an administrator. They can still read the chart of accounts and the customer accounts. Whoever installs Finance gets both roles.

Records

Finance keeps seven kinds of record. Each page explains how the record works and lists its fields.

Next steps