Starting an Income/Expense accounting

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The complete and professional accounting similar to Excel for those who do not have much accounting knowledge. You can always edit and get flawless results.

▶ Video: How to start an Income & Expense accounting file. Find out how to easily set up an Income & Expense accounting, adapt the Accounts and Categories tables, set a budget, enter the transactions and print reports.

Creating an accounting file, starting from a template

Banana Accounting Plus includes templates for all legal forms, divided by country and by category. They can be opened directly in the program, from the File menu, New... command, or they can be downloaded from our Templates page.

Here is how to start choosing a template directly from the program:

  1. File menu → New command
  2. Select the Region, the Category and the Accounting type
  3. From the list of the templates that appears, select the template that is closest to your own needs.
  4. Click on the Create button.

When entering a key word in the Search area, the program will  display the templates that contain the entered key word.

It is equally possible to start from a blank file, by activating the Create Empty file option.  In order to facilitate starting up and to avoid grouping errors, we however recommend that you always set out with existing template.

More information on how to create a new file is available on the Create New File page.

Setting up the File properties

Set your data in the File Properties (Base Data) and save the file as.

Save to disk

Via the File→ Save As command, save the data and also assign a name to the file. The typical save dialog of your operating system is displayed.

  • It is advisable to use the name of the company followed by the year  "Company-20xx.ac2" to distinguish it from other accounting files.
  • You can keep as many accounting files as you need and each one will have its own name.
  • You can choose the path or support you want (save on drive, USB or cloud).
    If you also expect to have documents linked to the current year's accounts, it is suggested that you create a separate directory for each accounting year where all the files are to be grouped. Please also visit the Organizing your files page.

 Customize the Accounts table

In the Accounts table, you can customize the estate accounts, according to your own needs:

  • You can change the Account numbers
  • You can change the Description
  • In the Opening column you need to enter your opening balances

For Liabilities' accounts (f.ex. debts), the amount of the opening balance should be preceded by the minus (-) sign.
This operation needs to be executed only when using Banana Accounting for the first time, since from then on, every end of the year, when creating a New Year (menu Actions → Create New Year command), the opening balance will be automatically transferred.

Personalizing accounts table, income & expenses accounting

 Customize the Categories table

In the Categories table, customize the income (earnings/revenue) and expense (expenses/costs) categories.
The Category numbers can be amended, as well as the Description.
At the start of the year, the categories don't and must not contain an opening balance, in order to determine the result of the accounting year.

tabella categorie Entrate / Uscite

Transactions table

In the Transactions table, the daily income and expense transactions are entered, indicating the account, for which the transaction was made and the category to which the income or expense is attributed.

Income and Expenses transactions
In the appropriate columns :

  • Enter the Date
  • Enter the Document number that is manually assigned to the paper document. This allows you to easily find documents, once the accounting transaction has been entered.
  • Enter a Description
  • In the Income column, enter the income amount
  • In the Expenses column, enter the expense amount
  • In the Account column enter the account number (it has to be an existing account in the Accounts table, ex. Bank)
  • In the Category column enter the expense or income category (it has to be an existing category in the Category table).

Speeding up the recording of the transactions

In order to speed up the recording of your transactions, you can use:

Make visible the Balance column in the Transactions table

The new Balance column is a very useful feature: it allows you to immediately spot possible differences.
The Balance column is not visible by default: you can make it visible via the Data → Columns setup menu.

Transactions with VAT

In order to enter transactions with VAT please proceed as follows:

  • from the File menu, choose New command and choose Income /Expenses accounting with VAT/Sales taxes
  • Choose one of the existing templates for your nation of the Income/expenses accounting with VAT type
    In order to enter transactions with VAT, please refer to the Transactions page.

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Transactions on multiple rows

Transactions on multiple rows, or Composed transactions are transactions involving more than two accounts and credits/debits on multiple accounts or categories (for example when you pay different invoices from the bank account). In this case you need to enter the transaction on multiple rows:

  • In the first row enter the total amount of the income or expense and the account from which this amount is debited or credited
  • In each subsequent row, enter the income or expense amount in the category column, and enter the appropriate category number.
    Each individual amount is recorded on different row. When all the individual income and expenses rows are entered there shouldn't be any differences.
  • If you have made the Balance column visible, you will immediately see that as you proceed, the difference detected gradually decreases, until it is extinguished when you have finished compounding.

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The Account card

The Account card allows you to have a complete list of entries relating to the same account or the same group.

  • To open an account card you click once on the account number cell and then click once on the small blue arrow appearing in the upper right corner of the cell.
  • To open multiple account cards you must select the Account cards command from Reports menu.
  • To update the account cards, following changes in the Transactions table, you must click on the two circular arrows symbol, located at the top right of the account card.

Income / expenses account card

The Category card

The Category card allows you to have a complete list of entries relating to the same category.

  • To open a category card you click on the account number cell and then click once on the small blue arrow appearing in the upper right corner of the cell.
  • To open multiple category cards you must select the Account cards command from Reports menu.
  • To update the category cards, following changes in the Transactions table, you must click on the two circular arrows symbol, located at the top right of the category card.

Income / expenses category card

Account cards per period

To open an account card with account balances at predefined dates, click on Reports in the menu, Account cards ... and click Period selected in the Period tab to insert your selected period. Visit the Period page for further information.

Print the Account cards

To print an Account card, open it from any table (Accounts or Transactions) and start printing from the File menu.

To print out several or all the Account cards, click Reports menu, select Account cards and select the Accounts you wish to print. The filter in the window allows you to select automatic selection of all accounts, cost centers, segments, groups etc. Visit the Account Cards page for further information.

Enhanced Statement

To view the Enhanced Statement and the Enhanced Statement with groups, choose the Reports menu and then the Enhanced statement or Enhanced statement with groups command. You can also obtain statements by period.

Rendiconto abbellito con gruppi

Archive data in PDF format

At the end of the year, when the accounting is done, corrected and revised, you can store all accounting data with the Create PDF dossier  command from the File menu.

The Budget

Before starting your accounting year, you can create a budget with your assumed expenses and revenue, in order to have control over the financial and economic situation of your company.

The budget can be set in two different ways:

  1. From the Budget column of the Categories table. For each account the yearly budget is indicated.
    In this case, when you process the budget from the Reports menu, Enhanced statement with groups command, the Budget column shows the amounts that relate to the entire year.
  2. From the Budget table, that you need to manually activate using the Add new functionalities command from the Tools menu.
  3. In this table all estimates are entered as budget transactions, either income or expenses. If you activate this table, the Budget column of the Accounts table is automatically deactivate.
    A detailed budget can be set in this case, that takes into account the possible variations during the year and in the different periods of the year

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