Income & Expense accounting

The Income and Expense Accounting of Banana Accounting Plus manages the income and expenses of accounts and categories in a simple and intuitive way. Despite its simplicity, it guarantees professional results, because it uses functions and calculation engines such as double-entry bookkeeping. It is ideal for:

•  Small businesses, to simplify the management of finances and have professional statements.
•  Freelancers and the self-employed, to monitor their income and expenditure in a more intuitive and immediate way.
•  Associations, Curatorships and other non-profit organisations, to keep accounts while working quickly, thanks to many functions that automate many work processes, resulting in clear and accurate statements.
• Auxiliary accounts for projects or real estate, to keep track of construction sites, projects, rents or other.
• Households, to keep track of expenses and income and manage the family budget

Getting Started with Income/Expense Accounting

For an easy and immediate start check our resources:   

• ▶ Video: How to start an Income and Expense accounting
• Discover all the features of Income and Expense accounting

You can open the template that is closest to your needs and immediately create the file for your accounting. Enter the initial balances and you are already up and running. For more information visit the general page of How to start with Banana Accounting Plus.

The Transactions table

The Transactions table is the core of Income/Expense bookkeeping.

In the Transactions table you enter incoming and outgoing transactions. Entry is extremely easy and intuitive, even for those with no accounting knowledge. 

Based on Income and Expenses: the table structure has columns where the data appears ordered and homogeneous. The columns and functions are customisable; rows can be highlighted and thanks to the innovative Filter function you can immediately find, edit and correct data. 

There are pre-defined main columns in which to enter:

• The date of the transaction
• The document number, if any
• The incoming or outgoing amount
• The account to which the transaction refers (cash, bank, post office, customer or supplier).
• The category for the income or expense

Quick entry of Transactions: To speed up the entry of transactions, you can use various features: from data entry with autocomplete, to Recurring transactions, Importing bank transactions, or even setting up Rules for automatic completion of imported transactions. In no time, you will have complete accounting and can focus more on the productive activities of your business.

Categorization of income and expenses: Transactions are assigned to specific categories or classes of spending and earning. This helps to organize and analyze financial information more easily.

Accounting without discrepancies: The Balance column is an extremely useful feature; it allows you to instantly see any discrepancies. To use the Balance column, you need to make it visible through the Data > Columns setup menu.

Types of Transactions

As with any type of file, the following types of trasnactions are possible in Income/Expenses:

• Simple transactions, executed on a single line
• Compound transactions, executed on several lines
• Transactions with VAT, possible in Income / Expenses with VAT 

Creating invoices  

Even in Income / Expense Accounting, despite its simplicity, you can generate invoices to send to your customers. You can print invoices with a QR code (for Switzerland) or without (other countries).

It only takes a few steps to create your invoices:

• In the Accounts table, set up the list of your customers, and for each customer enter all data (address, country, language..).
• In the Transactions table, enter the invoice data. By also completing the data in the Account column (account no.) and the Category column (category no.), you can not only create and print the invoice, but at the same time you have already accounted for it.

Further Functions

The programme also allows you to add further data to your Transactions, so that the same data can also be used for:

• VAT management
• Customer and Supplier control
• Cost Centres and Segments to have reports for projects or sectors of activity.
• Budget 

Reports and Printouts

After each transaction, the programme automatically updates all Account and Category balances.

You can obtain accurate and easy-to-understand reports, account and category sheets, journal and forecasts.

From the menu Reports > Enhanced Statement or Enhanced Statement with groups, get your reports in no time. Reports by period are also possible.

• The Enhanced statement displays all accounts and categories without any subgroups
• The Enhanced statement with groups display all accounts and categories also with subgroups

Printouts
The following printouts are possible from the Report menu:

• Journal
• Account/category cards
• Accounting report

Archiving data in PDF

At the end of the year, when all bookkeeping has been completed, corrected and audited, you can archive all accounting data with the command from the menu File > Create PDF Dossier .

Differences to double-entry bookkeeping

In double-entry bookkeeping, all accounts, both balance sheet and profit and loss account, are only found in the Accounts table. In Income/Expense accounting, to make it easier and more intuitive to use, the accounts are structured in two tables:

• Accounts table - list of asset accounts:
  • Assets are shown in positive
  • Debts are shown in negative
  • Net worth is calculated as the difference between assets and debts.
• Categories table  - list of expense and income accounts:
  • Expenditure items are in negative
  • Income items are in the positive
  • Profit or loss is calculated as the difference between positive and negative values. 

Transactions

All daily movements are entered in the Transactions table, both for double-entry bookkeeping and for Income/Expense bookkeeping. Between the two accounts, however, there is a substantial difference in the columns, namely:

• In the Income/Expense accounts there are two specific columns:
  • Account - where asset accounts that have movements based on expenses incurred or income received are recorded.
  • Category - where expense and income categories are recorded. It is also possible to have an account when bank and postal giro accounts are involved.
• In double-entry bookkeeping there are the following specific columns:
  • Debit - where increases in assets and decreases in liabilities and expenses are recorded.
  • Credit - where decreases in assets and increases in liabilities and revenues are recorded.
     

Information common to double-entry bookkeeping

On the pages of the Income and Expenses documentation you will find detailed and specific information. For all general functions, please refer to the double-entry accounting documentation. In particular:

• Add, rename or cancel an account
• Insert groups
• Check and recalculate accounting
• Lock transactions
• Create new year