Accounting

Every account in your books sits under a two-level classification: an Account Type (the broad bucket, such as Bank or Accounts Receivable) and, inside it, an Account Detail Type (a finer split, such as Savings or Sundry Debtors). To manage both, open Accounting → Account Types from the left-hand menu.

Dealersip ships with a full set of Types and Detail Types, so you can start posting straight away without touching this screen. But you can also build your own structure — add your own Types and Detail Types and simply leave the shipped ones unused. That is how a dealership sets its accounting up its own way.

These settings shape your whole chart of accounts, your financial statements and the figures on the Business Health dashboard. Consult an experienced accountant before adding or changing them.

How the screen is laid out

The screen has two stacked panes, and the top one drives the bottom one:

• The top pane lists your Account Types, with counts of Total Types and how many are built in (System Types). Its columns are Account Type, Statement, Classification, Nature, Sort Order and System.
• The bottom pane lists Account Detail Types, and always shows the ones belonging to whichever Account Type is selected above. Click a different Type on top and the bottom pane follows. Its columns are Account Detail Type, Classification Code, Sort Order and System.

Along the green bar at the top sit a statement filter (All Statements, Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss), a Search account types… box, and the Add New button that creates an Account Type. The bottom pane has its own Add button and its own search box — and that search is worth knowing about: although the pane normally shows only the selected Type's Detail Types, the search looks across every Detail Type you have, so you can find one without knowing which Type it belongs to.

What you can change on the built-in ones

Built-in rows are marked System and show a lock where the delete icon would be. The lock means one thing only: they cannot be deleted. Beyond that:

• A built-in Account Type can be renamed and its Sort Order changed. Its Statement, Classification and Nature are fixed, and the edit panel says so under each locked field.
• A built-in Account Detail Type can be renamed only.
• Anything you create is fully editable.

You are never obliged to use the shipped ones. Create your own and leave the defaults idle if that suits your dealership better.

Editing and deleting

Each row carries a pencil icon to open it for editing. A Type or Detail Type you created also shows a bin to delete it; built-in rows show the lock instead.

One rule catches people out: an Account Detail Type cannot be deleted once an account has been filed under it. Move or remove those accounts first, or simply stop using the Detail Type — there is no harm in leaving it in place.

Adding an Account Type

Press Add New on the top pane. The panel asks for five things:

• Account Type — the name, as it will appear throughout your chart of accounts.
• Statement — which financial statement this Type belongs to: the Balance Sheet or the Profit and Loss. Indian dealerships are also offered the Trading Account, for the direct trading income and costs that produce gross profit.
• Classification — the accounting class, and the choices follow the Statement you picked. Balance Sheet offers Asset and Liabilities; Profit and Loss offers Income and Expenses.
• Nature — the most important field on this panel. See below.
• Sort Order — a number deciding where this Type sits in the lists, and the order it appears in on your statements. Lower numbers come first.

Why Nature matters more than it looks

Statement and Classification tell Dealersip where a Type belongs on paper. Nature tells Dealersip what the Type actually is — that this one holds bank accounts, that one holds money customers owe you, another holds stock. It is how the software recognises accounts when it works on its own.

The clearest consequence is the Business Health dashboard. Its tiles are built by Nature, not by name: the Cash & Bank tile gathers every account whose Type has a bank or cash Nature, Receivables gathers the receivable Nature, and so on. Give a new Account Type the wrong Nature and its accounts land in the wrong tile; give it none and they are counted nowhere — the balances are still correct in your ledgers and statements, but the dashboard will quietly understate that section.

So when you create a Type, pick the Nature that matches what it genuinely holds, and if nothing fits, that is usually a sign the Type is not needed.

Adding an Account Detail Type

Press Add on the bottom pane. The panel asks for four things:

• Account Type — the parent this Detail Type sits under. If a Type is already selected in the top pane it is filled in for you, and you can change it to any other Type.
• Account Detail Type — the name.
• Classification Code — an identifier, explained below. Leave it as Default unless you have a reason not to.
• Sort Order — where it sits among the other Detail Types of the same Type.

What Classification Code does

Classification Code is an identifier. It marks a Detail Type as being a particular known kind of thing — a bank, an accounts-receivable group, a tax group, vehicle stock — so that Dealersip can find the right accounts when it does something automatically, rather than asking you every time.

Choosing Default means no identifier at all, which is right for most Detail Types you create yourself. Set one only when the Detail Type really is that kind of thing and you want the software to treat it accordingly.

Moving a Detail Type to a different Account Type

You can change a Detail Type's parent at any time, including one that already has accounts under it. The change takes effect immediately, and it is not cosmetic: the Detail Type takes on the new parent's Statement, Classification and Nature, so every account filed under it is reclassified at once.

That can move balances from one statement to another and change which Business Health tile they are counted in. It is occasionally exactly what you want — and it is an easy way to do real damage by accident. This is the change to take to your accountant first.

The Chart of Accounts is the list of the actual accounts your entries post to. Open it from Accounting → Chart Of Accounts in the left-hand menu.

Each account is filed under one Account Detail Type, and that is what gives the account its classification — which statement it appears on, and whether it counts as an asset, a liability, income or an expense. You never set that on the account itself; you set it once on the Detail Type (see Account Types and Account Detail Types).

The accounts you start with

Dealersip ships a ready-made set so a new dealership can post from day one. Some are system accounts: they cannot be deleted, but you can rename and reconfigure them, including moving them to a different Account Detail Type. The rest are ordinary defaults you can rename, reconfigure or delete.

Account	Account Type	Account Detail Type	Notes
Opening Balance Equity	Equity	Opening Balance Equity	System — cannot be deleted
Account Payables	Accounts Payable	Sundry Creditors	System — cannot be deleted
Account Receivables	Accounts Receivable	Sundry Debtors	System — cannot be deleted
Commission Payable	Accounts Payable	Sundry Creditors	System — cannot be deleted
Cash on Hand	Cash	Cash on Hand	System — cannot be deleted
Vehicle Purchases	Cost of Goods Sold	Used Vehicle Cost of Sales	Tax paid on purchase
Reconditioning Expenses	Other Current Liabilities	Accrued Expenses
Discount on Sale	Income	Contra Sales
Trade in Payables	Accounts Payable	Trade In Payables
Finance Companies Receivables	Accounts Receivable	Finance Company Receivable
Bank Account	Bank	Bank Accounts
Sales Tax	Other Current Liabilities	Sales Tax Payable
Vehicle Sales	Income	Used Vehicle Sales	Tax collected on sale
Owner Payables	Accounts Payable	Sundry Creditors
Commission Income	Other Income	Miscellaneous Other Income

Many of these are the accounts Dealersip reaches for when it posts an entry on its own. Which account it uses for what is set in Accounting Settings.

Finding an account

Accounts are grouped on screen under their Account Type — Bank, then Accounts Receivable, then Cash, and so on — so related accounts sit together. Counts of Total Accounts and System Accounts sit above the list.

Along the green bar at the top are the statement filter (All Statements, Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss, Trading Account), a Search accounts… box, and the Add New button. The search matches the account name and, if you have given the account a code, the code as well.

Each row shows the account name, its Account Detail Type, and a small Report badge naming the statement the account lands on. On the left are a pencil to edit and a bin to delete — except on system accounts, which show a lock instead and carry a note that they are auto-generated and to consult your accountant before changing them.

Adding or editing an account

Press Add New, the dark green button at the top right, or the pencil on a row. The panel asks for:

• Account Name — what the account is called throughout the software.
• Account Code — optional, but if you use one it must be unique. Codes are worth having: you can search on them, and they let you order and group accounts the way your accountant expects.
• Account Detail Type — the Detail Type this account belongs under. This single choice decides the account's classification and where it appears on your statements.
• Opening Balance, with a Dr / Cr box beside it — what the account already held on the day you started, and which side that balance sits on. Leave it empty for an account starting from nothing.
• Default Opposite Account — a convenience for journal entry, not an accounting rule. Name the account you would normally post against this one, and whenever you pick this account on one side of a Journal, Dealersip pre-fills that account on the next row. You can always change it. For example, set an Undeposited Cash account's default opposite to Bank Account: choosing Undeposited Cash on the credit side then fills Bank Account in for you.
• Tax Nature — appears only when the Detail Type you chose involves tax. The choices are Not Taxable, Tax Payable (tax you pay on purchases) and Tax Receivable (tax you collect on sales).
• Tax Code — appears once the nature is taxable, and lists only the codes set up for that direction. An Add Tax Code link beside it creates a new code without losing what you have typed.
• Description — free text, for anything worth recording about the account.

Addresses and contacts. For accounts whose nature suits it — receivable, payable and person-type accounts — the panel also offers address and contact sections, and you may add as many of each as you need. These are for information: they print on the account's ledger, and beyond that you are free to use them however suits your dealership.

Finish with Save and Close, or Save and Add New to enter another straight away.

How an opening balance is recorded

Dealersip never stores an opening balance as a loose number. When you save an account that has one, it writes a proper opening-balance entry, so the amount is part of your double-entry books like everything else. The entry balances the account against the Opening Balance Equity account, on the side you chose.

A receivable opening balance therefore posts as:

Dr  Accounts Receivable
    Cr  Opening Balance Equity

A payable opening balance runs the other way, with Opening Balance Equity debited and the payable account credited.

If you change the opening balance later, Dealersip updates that same entry rather than adding a second one, and keeps the date the account was created — even if the account started at zero and you add a balance to it months afterwards. That keeps the opening balance where it belongs in your books instead of landing in a later period.

Parties work the same way, except the account their balance lands in comes from the party's type — see Party Types.

Changing an account's Detail Type later

You can move an account to a different Account Detail Type at any time, and it is allowed even after the account has been used. Be aware of what that does: the account's whole history moves with it. Past entries are not left behind under the old classification — they take on the new one, so figures on your statements change for periods you may consider closed.

If the new Detail Type sits on the opposite side to the old one, the Business Health dashboard will flag the account as sitting on the wrong side. That flag is doing its job — treat it as a prompt to check the move was intended.

Deleting an account

The bin icon deletes an account, but only while it is genuinely unused:

• System accounts can never be deleted. They show a lock instead of a bin. You can still rename and reconfigure them.
• An account that has been used on a transaction cannot be deleted. Removing it would tear a hole in entries you have already posted.

There is no active or inactive setting on an account, so an account you have finished with cannot be hidden from the pickers. If you want to steer people away from one, the practical answer is to rename it — putting something like "do not use" in the name is crude, but it is the tool available, and it is better than leaving a misleading account looking current.

A party is anyone your dealership does business with — a customer, a supplier, a finance company. To work with them, open Accounting → Parties from the left-hand menu.

Parties are deliberately kept out of the ledger itself. Every posting is clubbed into Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable according to the party's role, so your financial statements stay uncluttered while each party still has a full record of their own (see Accounting).

Finding a party

The Parties screen opens on a list of everyone already set up. Along the green bar at the top, from left to right, sit the two filters, the search box and the button that adds a party:

• All Statuses — the status filter. Leave it as it is to see everyone, or pick Active or Inactive to see just those.
• All Types — the party-type filter. Pick one type (Customer, Dealer, Finance Company, Seller, and so on) to see only those parties.
• Search parties… — type any part of a party's details to find them.
• Add New — the dark green button at the far right, which creates a party.

Four counts sit above the list: Total Parties, how many are Active, how many are Inactive, and how many have an email address recorded. Below them the list tells you how many records are shown, and notes that it is sorted by active status and name — so active parties come first, alphabetically.

Each row shows the party's initials in a small badge, then the Name, Type, Opening Balance (tagged Receivable or Payable where there is one), Contact, Tax Reg Number, Email, Phone and Location. The table scrolls sideways if your screen is narrow.

Where a party has nothing recorded in a column, the list says so plainly — "No contact", "No email", "No phone", "No tax reg number" — rather than leaving a blank, so you can see at a glance what is missing.

On the left of every row are two icons: a pencil that opens the party for editing, and a bin that deletes it. There are no bulk actions; parties are worked on one at a time.

Adding or editing a party

Press Add New to create one, or the pencil on a row to change one. Either way the same panel slides in from the right, in three parts. Fields outlined in red are required.

Party Details

• Party Type (required) — what kind of party this is. Choose it first, because it decides which of the remaining fields appear and which of them you must fill in. If the type you need does not exist yet, the Create Type button beside the field makes one without losing what you have typed. A party's type can be changed later if you get it wrong.
• Company Name (required) — the party's name as you want it to appear everywhere. Names must be unique, so if one is already taken Dealersip refuses the save with "Party already exists".
• Contact Name — the person you deal with there.
• Opening Balance — what this party already owed, or was owed, on the day you start using Dealersip. Type the amount, then use the box beside it to say which way round it goes: Receivable means they owe you, Payable means you owe them. Leave it empty if the party starts from nothing. The amount cannot be negative and takes at most two decimal places.
• Tax Registration Number — the party's tax number, where they have one.
• Active — ticked by default. Untick it to retire a party you no longer trade with: they drop out of the pick-lists on new transactions, but their history and any balance they carry remain untouched and keep showing in your statements.

Contact

Email, Email CC, Email BCC, Phone, Mobile and Website. The CC and BCC addresses are used when Dealersip emails this party, so anything you put there is copied in automatically.

Address

The billing address — Address, City, State, ZIP Code and Country — and a Notes box for anything else worth recording.

Finish with Save and Close, or Save and Add New if you have several parties to enter one after another. Cancel closes the panel without saving.

How the opening balance is posted

Dealersip does not simply store the opening balance as a number. When you save a party that has one, it writes a proper opening-balance transaction behind the scenes, so the amount is part of your double-entry books like everything else. Which account it lands in is decided by the party's type — see Chart of Accounts for how that entry is built.

If you change the opening balance later, Dealersip updates that original transaction rather than adding a second one, and it keeps the date the party was created. That holds true even if the party started at zero and you add an opening balance months afterwards — the entry is still dated to the party's creation, so it stays where it belongs in your books rather than distorting a later period.

Deleting a party

The bin icon deletes a party. A party that has only ever had an opening balance can be deleted outright. Once a party has been used on a transaction, however, it cannot — Dealersip refuses with "This party has been used, hence cannot be deleted", because removing it would tear a hole in entries you have already posted.

When you want a party out of the way but cannot delete it, untick Active instead. That is what the setting is for.

The party type shapes the form

What you see on the party panel is not fixed. It follows the Party Type you chose and how that type has been set up under Party Types:

• Which fields appear — the billing address section, and type-specific fields such as Dealer Licence Number or Commission (%), show only for the types set up to use them.
• Which fields are mandatory — a type can insist on the Tax Registration Number, the billing address, and so on, before the party will save.
• Where the opening balance goes — the Receivable or Payable choice sends the balance to whichever account that party type nominates for each side.

So if a field you expect is missing, or one you would rather not fill in is being demanded, the place to change it is the party type — not the party.

A party can be both a customer and a supplier

Nothing stops you both selling to and buying from the same party, and when you do they will appear in your Receivables and your Payables at the same time. That is correct accounting rather than a mistake, and their own ledger nets the two together. It catches people out often enough to be worth reading in full: see Why a party can show as both a receivable and a payable.

Confirmed correct behaviour, not a bug - but it confuses people, so it belongs in the manual.

Situation: you create a party with an opening balance of 50,000 Dr (they owe you), then buy a vehicle from that same party for 7,345,000 and pay 50,000 cash.

• The opening balance posts to Accounts Receivable (because the party was created with a Dr opening balance).
• The vehicle purchase posts to Accounts Payable, and the 50,000 cash reduces that payable.
• Result: Accounts Receivable holds 50,000 Dr and Accounts Payable holds 7,295,000 Cr - for the same party.
• The party ledger nets them and correctly closes at 7,245,000 Cr (= 7,345,000 vehicle - 50,000 cash - 50,000 opening).

Points to make in the manual:

1. Receivables and payables are shown separately (gross), never automatically netted, even for the same party. This is standard accounting - you only offset when there is a right of set-off and you intend to settle net.
2. So a party you both sell to and buy from will appear in both the receivables and payables figures. Neither is wrong.
3. To see the party's true net position, open the party ledger - it nets everything and tells you who owes whom.
4. If you actually settle net (pay them the difference and clear the receivable), that needs a set-off journal: Dr Accounts Payable / Cr Accounts Receivable for the smaller amount. Dealersip has no built-in workflow for this today, so it must be entered as a journal, otherwise the old receivable sits on the books forever.
5. Related tip: check the party type and opening-balance direction when creating a party. Money you have advanced to a supplier may belong on the payable side (or an "Advances to Suppliers" account) rather than in Accounts Receivable.

A Party Type classifies your parties (for example customer, supplier, finance company, salesperson). It does two jobs: it decides which accounts a party's opening balance posts to, and it tailors the party form — which fields appear and which must be filled in. Manage them at Accounting → Party Types.

What ships with Dealersip, and what you can change

Dealersip ships a set of ready-made party types — Auction Company, Customer (Retail), Dealer (Customer), Dealer (Vendor), Finance Company and Sales Person. In the list these show a lock, which means only one thing: they cannot be deleted. You can still configure them freely — rename them, point them at different accounts, and change which fields the party form shows or requires.

You can also create your own party types as your business needs them. Those can be deleted, unless a party is already using them.

The list shows each party type with its Receivable Account and Payable Account, plus counts of Total Party Types, Configured Accounts and System Types. Click a row’s pencil icon to open the add/edit panel. To create one from scratch, press Add New at the top right of the Party Types screen.

Setting where opening balances go

The panel's two dropdowns decide where a party's opening balance is posted, based on the Receivable / Payable choice made on the party:

• If opening is debit (Receivable from party) — used when the party owes the dealership. You may choose receivable and other asset accounts only.
• If opening is credit (Payable to party) — used when the dealership owes the party, such as a customer advance or deposit. You may choose payable and other liability accounts only.

The two must be different accounts, so the Receivable/Payable choice on a party actually changes where its balance lands. An Add Account button beside each lets you create the account without leaving the panel.

This is how you steer different kinds of party to the right place. For example, a Seller party type can post its payable side to Trade in Payables rather than the general Accounts Payable, keeping that kind of debt identifiable.

Choosing which fields the party form shows

The Party Form UI Config section tailors the party form for this type, with three lists of checkboxes:

• Show fields/sections — force a field or section to appear.
• Hide fields/sections — remove it from the form.
• Required fields — make a field mandatory before a party can be saved (for example Tax Reg Number, Billing Address, City, State, Country, Postal Code).

If you leave every Show and Hide box unticked, you get the standard behaviour: the fields appear, and they are optional. Only tick these boxes when you want to depart from that — and note a field cannot be required while its section is hidden.

A transaction (or voucher — see Accounting for why this manual says transaction) is one financial event recorded in Accounting: a receipt of money, a payment, a journal adjustment, or the entry Dealersip makes automatically when you save a sale, a purchase or a party's opening balance. Whatever the form looks like, each transaction becomes a balanced entry: debit and credit lines whose totals are equal. You work in the language of the form (who paid, how much, against which invoice) and Dealersip translates it into the debits and credits.

All transactions appear together in one register, whichever form created them. The ones Dealersip generated for you (from sales, purchases and opening balances) are view-only — you can open one to see its accounting, but you cannot edit or delete it by hand, because the source document owns it.

What the figures across the top tell you

Above the list sit six figures for the period you are looking at:

• Total Debit and Total Credit — these should always be equal. They are the proof that the period's books balance.
• Transactions — how many there are in the period.
• Manual and System — how many you entered yourself, and how many Dealersip created from sales, purchases and opening balances.
• Out of Balance — how many transactions do not balance. This should always read 0. Anything else points to an entry that needs looking at.

Choosing the period

The date button (showing the current period, e.g. "This Month") opens quick choices — Today, Yesterday, This Week, This Month, This FY — plus From and To boxes for any range of your own. Press Apply to load it. The chosen range is printed under the list heading, so you always know what you are looking at.

Narrowing the list

Filters lets you cut the list four ways, in any combination:

• Type — show only one kind of transaction (Journal, Payment, Receipt, and so on).
• Account — show only transactions that touch one account.
• Party — show only transactions involving one customer or supplier.
• Source — show only Manual entries or only System ones.

Search then works within whatever the filters have already selected, so you can filter to an account and search inside just those results.

Reading the list

Each row shows the date, the type, the transaction number, the particulars, the narration, the debit and credit totals, and the source.

Particulars summarises the entry as debit account → credit account. When more accounts share a side, a + number says how many others: "Finance Companies Receivables +2 → Vehicle Sales +1" means three accounts were debited and two credited.

Source reads Manual for entries you made, or System with a lock for entries Dealersip created from a sale, a purchase or an opening balance. Rows are shown newest first.

Seeing the full double entry

The chevron at the far left of a row expands it in place to show the entry itself — every account, the party on that line, and the debit or credit amount, with each line's own narration beneath the account name, a Total row, and the transaction's narration underneath.

This is the quickest way to check what an entry actually did without leaving the list.

Opening a transaction on its own

The open-in-panel icon opens the transaction in a side panel, showing the same accounts, parties and amounts with its number, type and date at the top.

The panel is where the links are:

• A party on any line opens that party.
• A system entry carries a banner saying it cannot be edited or deleted, with a link straight to the document that created it — for example "Open source sale #7". Use it to get to the sale or purchase behind the accounting.

Creating, editing and deleting

New, the dark green button at the top right of the register, lists every transaction type you have — the built-in ones and any you created — for example Deposit Cash, Journal, Payment, Receipt, Withdraw Cash. Pick one and Dealersip opens that type's own entry form, built exactly as the type was set up (see Transaction Types). So the form you get depends entirely on which type you chose.

On each row of the list, the edit and delete icons work on transactions you created. System entries cannot be edited or deleted here — change the sale or purchase they came from and Dealersip rebuilds the entry.

To start one, go to Accounting → Transactions and press New, the dark green button at the top right of the register. Choose Journal from the menu that drops down.

Journal is the special one: the raw two-sided entry for when you want to say exactly what to debit and what to credit.

At the top — the journal date, the transaction type (fixed, showing Journal), and the journal number, which Dealersip assigns.

The grid — one line per account you want to touch, with these columns:

• Account — the account this line posts to.
• Debits and Credits — a line uses one or the other, never both. Type an amount in Debits and the Credits box on that line is cleared, and the other way round.
• Description — a note for that line alone.
• Associated Party (Optional) — the customer or supplier this line concerns.
• Tax (if applicable) — a tax code for the line, and an Incl. tick box beside it that says whether the amount you typed already includes that tax (see below).

Add as many lines as you need with Add lines, or start over with Clear all lines. Each line also has:

• a drag handle to move it up or down, and
• a row menu (⋮) with Insert above, Insert below, Duplicate and Delete.

What tagging a party on a line means

The side the line sits on decides which way the money runs. Tag a party against a debit to a receivable account — as in A/R – Account Receivables debited with Ashok on the line — and it means that amount is receivable from Ashok. Tag a party against a credit to a payable account and it means the amount is payable to them.

That tag is what puts the amount on the party's own ledger, so always name the party on lines that concern one.

Adding tax to a line

Pick a tax code on a line and Dealersip works out the tax and posts it to that code's tax account for you — you never add the tax line yourself. It appears in the saved transaction as its own line, noting which code and rate produced it.

The Incl. tick box decides how the amount you typed is read:

• Not ticked (tax on top) — the amount is the figure before tax. The tax is calculated on it and added.
• Ticked (tax included) — the amount already contains the tax. Dealersip takes the tax back out of it, so the line itself keeps only the net.

Worked example. You bank 6,500.00 from a vehicle sale, and that 6,500.00 already includes 13% HST. Enter just two lines — Bank Account debited 6,500.00, and Vehicle Sales credited 6,500.00 with the HST code and Incl. ticked. Dealersip splits the credit for you and saves:

Account	Debit	Credit
Bank Account	6,500.00
Vehicle Sales		5,752.21
Sales Tax		747.79
Total	6,500.00	6,500.00

The sale is recorded net, the tax sits in the tax account ready to be remitted, and the entry balances against the full amount banked.

Reading the totals, and the out-of-balance warning

Under the grid Dealersip shows a Subtotal for each side, a row for each tax applied, and the Total debits and credits. In the example above the subtotal credit reads 5,752.21 with the HST row showing 747.79 — so you can see the split before you save.

To start one, go to Accounting → Transactions and press New, the dark green button at the top right of the register. Choose Payment from the menu that drops down.

A Payment records money going out — you paying a supplier. It comes out of a bank or cash account and settles that supplier's open bills. You never choose debits or credits; filling the form is enough.

Fill in the top of the form:

• Paid to (Party) — who you are paying. Create Party is there if they aren't set up yet.
• Date, and the Payment no., which Dealersip assigns.
• Pay from — the bank or cash account the money leaves. Create Account is there too.
• Reference no. — the cheque or transfer reference.
• Amount paid — the full amount going out.

Then apply it to the bills you are settling. Choosing the party loads their open items under Outstanding transactions, each showing the bill, its date, the original amount, the balance still open, and a Payment box for the amount you are putting against it. Tick bills individually, or use the header tick to select them all. The bill number is a link, so you can open the bill itself to check before you apply anything.

Add an overall note and attachments if you want a record with the entry — the supplier's invoice, a cheque image, a remittance advice.

The bar at the bottom shows Amount, Allocated and On account as you work, so you always know how much of the payment is still unapplied. Finish with Save, or Save and new to enter another.

Worked example. You pay Ashok 52,000.00 from the Bank Account. Bill PUR-48/550215 was originally 500,000.00 and has 300,000.00 still open, and you apply 50,000.00 of the payment to it. The bar reads Amount 52,000.00, Allocated 50,000.00, On account 2,000.00 — that last 2,000.00 goes to the control account you choose, explained under Amounts left on account, and the control account.

To start one, go to Accounting → Transactions and press New, the dark green button at the top right of the register. Choose Receipt from the menu that drops down.

A Receipt is the mirror image: money coming in, from a customer. It goes into a bank or cash account and settles that customer's open invoices.

The form works exactly like the Payment form, with the wording turned around:

• Received from (Party) instead of Paid to.
• Deposit to — the bank or cash account the money goes into — instead of Pay from.
• Amount received instead of Amount paid, and Receipt no. instead of Payment no.
• Outstanding transactions lists the customer's open sale invoices rather than supplier bills.

Everything else is the same: tick the invoices you are settling and type how much to apply to each, add an overall note and attachments if useful, and watch Amount / Allocated / On account at the bottom. Finish with Save or Save and new.

Anything you do not apply to an invoice is recorded on account — see Amounts left on account, and the control account.

To start one, go to Accounting → Transactions and press New, the dark green button at the top right of the register. Choose Deposit Cash from the menu that drops down.

Deposit Cash records cash leaving your premises and arriving in the bank. Name the bank account once at the top, then list the cash you are banking.

At the top:

• Date, the transaction No. (Dealersip assigns it), and an optional Reference no. — the deposit slip number, for example.
• Deposit To — the bank account the money is going into. Create Account is beside it if the account doesn't exist yet.
• Amount Deposited — the total going into the bank.

The grid — one line for each amount making up that deposit:

• Account / Category — which cash account the money is coming out of.
• Description — what this particular amount is, for example "Daily cash sale" or "John's collection".
• Amount.

Use + Add line for more rows and the bin icon to remove one. Add a Note and attachments — a scanned deposit slip is the obvious one. Finish with Save, or Save and new.

The Total at the bottom adds up the grid lines, so you can see at a glance that they come to the amount you deposited. The two must agree before the transaction will save.

Keeping your cash accounts the way you want

You can run as many cash accounts as suits you. Many dealerships keep an Undeposited Cash account so money collected but not yet banked is visible, then clear it with a Deposit Cash. Others keep a single cash account and simply tell the deposits apart in the Description column. Both work — it is a question of how much detail you want on the face of the accounts rather than in the descriptions.

Both forms are configurable

Deposit Cash and Withdraw Cash are ordinary transaction types, so what they show is up to you (see Transaction Types). Every label on them can be renamed — a dealership that thinks of these as bills could relabel No. as Bill No., or Deposit To as Account. You can also turn the Description column off if you don't use it, and turn a Name (Customer/Supplier) column on, which is not there as shipped.

If you turn the Party Name column on

Both forms ship without a Party Name column, and we recommend leaving them that way. These transactions move your own money between your own accounts, so there is usually no customer or supplier involved at all — and naming one has a real effect on that party's balance.

Here is what happens. In a Deposit Cash, the grid lines are the credit side (cash leaving the cash account) and the bank account is the debit. So a party named on a grid line receives a credit on their ledger, which is the same thing as the dealership owing them more. The entry ends up reading as though that money was paid to them out of the bank.

Worked example. A Deposit Cash banks 8,000.00: Bank Account is debited 8,000.00, and the cash lines are credited 5,000.00, 2,000.00 and 1,000.00. The 5,000.00 line was tagged to a party. Open that party's ledger and the deposit is sitting there as a 5,000.00 credit against Bank Account, pushing their balance up to 71,411.00 Cr — so the books now say the dealership owes them 5,000.00 more than it really does.

Withdraw Cash does the same thing in reverse. There the grid lines are the debit side, so a party named on one gets a debit on their ledger — making it look as though they owe the dealership money they never borrowed.

Keep the Name (Customer/Supplier) column switched off on Deposit Cash and Withdraw Cash unless you have a specific reason not to. These transactions move your own money between your own accounts, so there is usually no customer or supplier involved at all — and naming one has a real effect on that party's balance.

Here is what happens. In a Deposit Cash, the grid lines are the credit side (cash leaving the cash account) and the bank account is the debit. So a party named on a grid line receives a credit on their ledger, which is the same thing as the dealership owing them more. The entry ends up reading as though that money was paid to them out of the bank.

Worked example. A Deposit Cash banks 8,000.00: Bank Account is debited 8,000.00, and the cash lines are credited 5,000.00, 2,000.00 and 1,000.00. The 5,000.00 line was tagged to a party. Open that party's ledger and the deposit is sitting there as a 5,000.00 credit against Bank Account, pushing their balance up to 71,411.00 Cr — so the books now say the dealership owes them 5,000.00 more than it really does.

Withdraw Cash does the same thing in reverse. There the grid lines are the debit side, so a party named on one gets a debit on their ledger — making it look as though they owe the dealership money they never borrowed.

Left off — as shipped — the transaction says exactly what it is: your own money moving between your own accounts. Turn the column on only when the amounts genuinely do belong on someone's ledger.

A double entry must balance. When the two totals differ, the total line shows "Out of balance by …" in red, and the entry is not finished. Dealersip shows you the gap but never closes it for you — deciding which account takes the difference is an accounting decision, and yours to make.

Below the grid you can add an Overall Note for the whole transaction and attachments — a scanned document, a receipt. Finish with Save, or Save and new to enter another.

To start one, go to Accounting → Transactions and press New, the dark green button at the top right of the register. Choose Withdraw Cash from the menu that drops down.

Withdraw Cash is the mirror image: money coming out of the bank and into your cash. The form is laid out identically, with the wording turned around:

• Withdrawn From — the bank account the money is leaving, instead of Deposit To.
• Amount Withdrawn — the total coming out, instead of Amount Deposited.
• The grid lists the cash accounts receiving the money, each with its description and amount.

Everything else behaves the same: Date, No., Reference no., + Add line, the running Total that must match the amount withdrawn, a Note, attachments, and Save or Save and new.

The guidance on running multiple cash accounts, renaming the labels on these forms, and why the Name column is best left off applies to both forms and is covered under Entering a Deposit Cash.

Money you receive or pay does not always match an invoice exactly. You might pay a round 52,000.00 against a 50,000.00 bill, take a deposit before any invoice exists, or receive a payment from a customer with nothing outstanding at all. Whatever you do not apply to a specific document is recorded on account.

What a control account is. A control account is an account that holds a party's balance as a whole, rather than against one particular invoice or bill — Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable are the everyday examples. An on-account amount has no invoice to attach to, so it has to sit in one of these accounts against the party's name until it is applied later.

When Dealersip asks you for one. Whenever a receipt or payment leaves an unallocated amount, the form shows a Control account (On Account) list for you to choose from, with a Create Account link beside it. Pick the account where that leftover should be recorded, and Dealersip posts it there.

This covers two situations:

• Part of the money is left over — as in the 2,000.00 example above.
• The party has nothing outstanding at all — Dealersip tells you plainly ("This party has no outstanding transactions, so the entire amount will be recorded on account") and the whole amount goes to the control account you choose.

An on-account amount is not an error. It is a real advance or credit standing against that party, and it shows on their ledger. It stays there until a future invoice or bill is settled against it.

To start one, go to Accounting → Transactions and press New, the dark green button at the top right of the register, then choose your own transaction type from the menu that drops down. Custom types appear in that menu alongside the built-in ones.

You can build your own transaction types (Accounting -> Transaction Types). When you set one up you choose "Which side is a single fixed account?" The answer changes how the entry form behaves, and "No fixed side" is the plain-journal option that this section explains. (The other choice - a fixed debit or credit account - makes a Bill/Receipt-style form where one account is filled in for you and everything else is listed against it.)

What "no fixed side" means

It means the person entering the transaction picks the account on both sides themselves - exactly like a manual journal. There is no account that Dealersip fills in automatically. Use it for transactions that don't always hit the same account, such as a general adjustment or a transfer you want to spell out line by line.

The entry screen

It's a grid, one line per account you want to touch. The always-present columns are Account / Category, Debit, and Credit; a line uses either its Debit box or its Credit box, never both. Depending on how the type was set up, the grid may also show Description and Name (Customer / Supplier).

The account you pick decides the side

When the type was set up, each account group was placed on either the "Debit side can use" list or the "Credit side can use" list. So every account belongs to one side. On the entry grid this means:

• Pick an account and only its side's amount box stays open - the other one is greyed out.
• An account set up for the debit side can only be debited; an account set up for the credit side can only be credited.

This is why you can't type a credit against an account that was only allowed on the debit side - the box simply won't accept it. It stops the "account is not allowed" message you'd otherwise only see when you tried to save.

The totals show both sides and the difference

A no-fixed-side transaction is a two-sided entry, so the footer shows Total Debit and Total Credit separately - not one combined number. When the two don't match, it shows "Out of balance by ..." in red. A proper double-entry has to balance (total debit = total credit), so that message is telling you the entry isn't finished. The screen shows you the gap; it does not fill it in for you - you decide which account takes the balancing amount.

Customer / supplier on each line

If the type was set to ask for a customer or supplier on each row and to require it, then every line needs a name before it will save. Leaving one blank is refused, with a message telling you which is missing. (If instead the type asks for one name for the whole transaction, you fill it in once at the top.)

Quick checklist for entering one

1. Add a line, pick the account - notice which amount box opens.
2. Enter the amount in that box.
3. Fill the name if the type requires it.
4. Repeat until Total Debit equals Total Credit and the "out of balance" note disappears.
5. Save.

A Transaction Type is the definition behind an entry form — what the form asks for, and how it turns what you type into a balanced entry. (Indian users will recognise this as a voucher type.) Manage them at Accounting → Transaction Types.

Every transaction type does exactly one thing: create a double entry. Nothing more. The difference between them is only how much accounting you have to think about. A transaction type decides the debits and credits for you, so you can work in business language — who paid, how much, against which invoice — instead of deciding what to debit and what to credit.

Journal is the one exception, and it is deliberate. It is the raw two-sided entry where you choose both sides yourself, for experienced accountants who want to post exactly what they intend, including corrections and adjustments no purpose-built form covers. Everything else in Dealersip keeps the double entry behind the scenes.

Built-in types (the ones on the New Transaction menu): Deposit Cash, Journal, Payment, Receipt, Withdraw Cash.

• Journal — the expert, two-sided entry described above; you pick the accounts on both sides. Used for adjustments and set-offs.
• Receipt and Payment — guided money-in / money-out forms that hide the debits and credits. A receipt puts money into a bank or cash account and settles it against open sale invoices; a payment takes money out and settles open purchase bills.
• Deposit Cash and Withdraw Cash — guided cash-transfer forms between your cash and bank accounts.

Beyond these, Dealersip posts its own entries for sales, purchases and opening balances. Those aren't on the New Transaction menu and you never enter them by hand.

Finding a transaction type

The screen opens on a list of every type you have, with a count of Total Transaction Types above it. Along the green bar at the top are a Search transaction types… box and the Add New button that creates one.

Each row shows three things: the Transaction Type name, the System Type it is based on, and an Entry tag reading either System or Manual.

System Type names the built-in behaviour the type is built on — the engine underneath it, rather than something you act on. It is there so you can tell at a glance what a renamed type really does: a type called "Supplier Bill" that shows Payment as its System Type behaves like a payment, whatever it has been called.

On the left of each row is a pencil to open the type, and either a bin to delete it or a lock where deletion is not possible.

What ships, and how much of each you can change

Dealersip ships two kinds of transaction type, and the difference decides how much you may alter.

System types

Marked System in the list and showing a lock instead of a bin. They can never be deleted, and how far you can configure them varies:

• Journal and Opening Balance are not editable at all. They open read-only. These two are the foundation of the double-entry system, so nothing about them can be altered.
• Payment and Receipt are partly configurable. You may change the name and the allowed account groups on the debit and credit sides — so a Receipt can be limited to the bank, cash and card accounts you actually deposit into. Everything else is greyed out and stays as built: the fixed side, the customer/supplier settings, sales tax, the wording labels, the reference field, settling outstanding items and attachments. Those are what make a Receipt behave like a receipt.

Types shipped ready to change

Deposit Cash and Withdraw Cash are shipped with Dealersip but are not system types. They are marked Manual, and they are fully editable — every setting on the design form is open to you, exactly as if you had built them yourself. Treat them as worked examples you are free to reshape.

The types you create

Anything you add is fully editable and, while unused, deletable.

Designing your own transaction type

Custom transaction types exist so you can shape accounting entries however your dealership needs them.

Consult your accountant before configuring a transaction type. These settings decide what gets debited and credited on every entry made with the type. Configured wrongly, they can seriously corrupt your accounting.

Add New, the button at the top right of the Transaction Types screen, opens the setup form. Each setting is explained below, in the order it appears. Options that only matter in certain setups stay hidden or greyed out until they apply.

Transaction type name

What the type is called. This is the name users pick from the New Transaction menu, so name it after the job it does — "Supplier Bill", "Expense Voucher", "Owner Drawing". Names must be unique — reuse one and Dealersip refuses with "This transaction type already exists". A type you create appears on the New Transaction menu as soon as you save it.

Which side is a single fixed account?

The most important choice on the form. Some transactions always post to one account on one side and list everything else in a grid on the other side — a Bill, for example, always credits Accounts Payable while the expense rows are entered against it.

• No fixed side (users pick both sides) — a plain journal. Users choose accounts on both sides and must balance the entry themselves. (See "Entering a custom transaction (no fixed side).)
• Debit side is one fixed account — the debit is fixed; the grid rows are credits.
• Credit side is one fixed account — the credit is fixed; the grid rows are debits.

Choosing a fixed side reveals the next two settings.

How is that account chosen?

Appears once you choose a fixed side.

Decide how much freedom the user has over that account:

• Only the accounts I choose — you name the accounts. Pick one and it is pinned to every transaction of this type (the user just sees it, and cannot change it). Pick several and the user chooses between them.
• Any account in the groups I choose — you name the account groups instead, and the user may pick any account inside them.

Fixed accounts / Account groups to pick from

Appears once you choose a fixed side; which of the two you see follows your answer above.

The list that goes with the choice above — either the specific accounts, or the account groups. You do not need to set the allowed groups for this side separately; Dealersip works them out from what you pin here.

Add up all the grid rows and post the total to this account automatically

Appears once you choose a fixed side.

Tick this and the user never types the fixed-side amount — Dealersip totals the grid rows (including tax) and posts that total to the fixed account. Leave it unticked when the user should type the amount themselves, which is what a settle-outstanding transaction needs.

Debit side can use / Credit side can use

Which account groups users may pick from on each side. This is what keeps entry sensible — a supplier bill can be limited to expense groups, so nobody posts one to a bank account by accident. A side that is a single fixed account is not shown here, because it is already decided.

Ask for a customer or supplier on this transaction

Tick this when the entry should record who it involves — a supplier for a bill, a customer for a receipt. Leave it off for transactions that involve no outside party, such as a transfer between your own accounts. Ticking it reveals the four settings below.

Where is it entered?

Appears once "Ask for a customer or supplier" is ticked.

• One for the whole transaction — a single name at the top of the form. Use this when everything on the entry concerns the same party.
• One on each row — every grid row carries its own name. Use this when a single entry covers several parties at once.

Limit to party types

Appears once "Ask for a customer or supplier" is ticked. Optional.

Restrict the picker to certain party types, so a supplier bill only offers suppliers. Leave it empty to allow any party type.

What to call it on the form

Appears once "Ask for a customer or supplier" is ticked. Optional.

A label so the form reads naturally in context — Supplier, Customer, Received from. Left empty, the field is simply called Party.

Party must be filled in

Appears once "Ask for a customer or supplier" is ticked.

Makes the name mandatory — the transaction cannot be saved without it. Settling outstanding invoices needs this on, so if you turn that option on, Dealersip ticks this for you (see below).

Allow sales tax on this transaction

Tick this if entries of this type can carry tax. It adds the Sales Tax column to the grid and reveals the setting below. Leave it off for transactions that never involve tax, such as a cash transfer.

Amounts are usually entered as

Appears once "Allow sales tax on this transaction" is ticked.

How users normally type amounts on this form:

• Before tax (tax added on top) — the usual choice; tax is calculated and added.
• Tax included in the amount — the amount already contains the tax, which is worked back out of it.
• No tax by default — tax is available but off unless chosen on a row.

Columns in the entry grid

The columns of the entry grid: Account / Category, Description, Amount, Sales Tax, Name (Customer/Supplier), Class, Billable and Markup %. For each you can:

• Tick it on or off to show or hide the column.
• Rename it by typing over the label — the box shows the standard name until you do.
• Mark it Required, so a row cannot be left with that box empty.
• Drag it by the handle to change the column order.

Account / Category and Amount are always shown and always required — an entry cannot exist without an account and an amount — so their boxes are ticked and cannot be changed. (Today the entry grid renders Account / Category, Description, Amount, Sales Tax and Name; Class, Billable and Markup % can be switched on here but do not yet appear on the entry form.)

Number label

An optional name for the transaction's number field — for example "Bill no.". Left empty, it is simply "No.".

Amount label

An optional name for the amount field — for example "Amount paid". Left empty, it is "Amount".

Fixed account label

An optional name for the fixed-account field — for example "Pay from" or "Deposit to". Left empty, it is "Account".

Show a reference number field

Adds a free-text reference box to the form, for a cheque number, a supplier's invoice number, or any document reference you want recorded with the entry.

Let users settle outstanding invoices / bills

Turns the entry grid into a list of the party's open invoices or bills, so a payment can be applied against them.

It is greyed out until you choose a fixed account side, because there has to be one account for the money to come from or go to. Pick a fixed side and it becomes available. (If you later switch back to "No fixed side", it switches itself off again.)

Ticking it sets three other options for you, because settling only works with them. Dealersip turns on "Ask for a customer or supplier", sets it to "One for the whole transaction", ticks "Party must be filled in", and unticks "Add up all the grid rows" — then tells you it has done so. The reason is practical: outstanding amounts are looked up per party, so the form needs one required party to know whose invoices to load, and the user must type the amount rather than have it totalled from rows.

These stay locked together while the option is on. If you change one of them back — switch the party to per-row, untick "Party must be filled in", or tick "add up all the grid rows" — Dealersip restores the combination it needs. To change them freely, untick "Let users settle outstanding invoices / bills" first.

See Settling outstanding invoices and bills below for how the direction is decided.

Allow file attachments

Lets users attach files — a scanned bill, a receipt, a cheque image — to entries of this type. On by default.

Preview

Opens the entry form exactly as users will see it, before you commit. Use it to check the wording and columns make sense in practice. Previewing saves nothing — it is purely a look at the form, so you can try it as often as you like. When you are satisfied, press Save and Close, or Save and Add New to set up another.

Settling outstanding invoices and bills

Ticking "Let users settle outstanding invoices / bills" turns the entry grid into a list of the party's open items. It needs three things set: a single fixed account side, a customer/supplier that is required and entered once for the whole transaction, and the amount typed in (not added up from the grid).

The direction is decided by which side is fixed. If the debit side is the fixed account — that is, your bank or cash accounts, so money is coming in — the form loads outstanding sale invoices. If the payment accounts are on the credit side, money is going out, so it loads unsettled purchases.

What the finished entry form looks like

Whichever shape it takes, the form carries a date, an automatic number, an optional reference, a note and (if allowed) attachments — and Create Party / Create Account links so you never have to break off to set something up first.

The middle of the form is one of three shapes:

• Grid against a fixed account — the fixed account sits at the top with the amount; the rows below it carry your chosen columns. The totals show Subtotal, Tax and Total.
• Journal style (no fixed side) — rows on both sides, with Total Debit and Total Credit shown separately and an out-of-balance warning until they match.
• Settle outstanding — an Outstanding transactions table listing each open Invoice / Bill with its Date, Original, Balance and the Payment you are applying, with a select-all tick. Totals show Amount, Allocated and On account. Anything you don't allocate stays on account as an advance. If the party has nothing outstanding at all, Dealersip says so and asks which control account the unallocated amount should go to.

Receipts and Payments follow that last shape, with wording to match: a receipt asks Received from and Deposit to; a payment asks Paid to and Pay from.

Changing a type that is already in use

Dealersip lets you reconfigure a transaction type even after transactions have been posted with it. That is deliberate — you get real freedom to reshape a form as your dealership changes — but the freedom has a cost, and it is worth understanding before you use it.

Nothing already posted is rewritten. Existing transactions keep the accounts and amounts they were saved with, your ledgers stay correct, and your statements do not move. What changes is how those older transactions behave when someone next opens one on the new version of the form.

What you will see, depending on what you changed:

• You changed the allowed account groups. An older transaction may not open properly for editing: the account list on the side you changed comes up empty, because the account it was posted to is no longer among the ones the form offers.
• You hid a column in the entry grid. The data behind it is still there and still correct — hide the party column, for instance, and each line keeps its party, the amount still appears on that party's ledger, and nothing in your accounts changes. But the entry form no longer shows it, and filtering on it stops working.
• You hid a column you now need to change. This is the trap. Because the control is gone from the form, there is no way to alter what sits behind it. With the party column hidden you cannot clear a party from a transaction, however much you want to.
• You removed the grid. Settlements attached to an older transaction are dropped when that transaction is next edited and saved. Simply viewing it is harmless; saving it is what applies the loss.

The rule of thumb. Changing a type's configuration is, in effect, a statement that you do not intend to go back and edit the entries already made with it. That is usually fine — old entries stay right where they are.

But if you need the new behaviour and you still expect to work on the older transactions, do not reshape the existing type. Create a new transaction type instead and leave the old one in place for its own history. Nothing stops you having both, and it costs you nothing: there is no limit on how many transaction types you can have.

Deleting a transaction type

A rule that runs through the whole of Dealersip applies here too: nothing can be deleted once anything has been recorded against it. So a transaction type that has been used for even one transaction cannot be removed — deleting it would break the entries that depend on it.

On top of that, system types can never be deleted at all, used or not. They show a lock where the bin would be.

That leaves types you created, or the shipped Manual ones, while they are still unused. If you cannot delete a type you no longer want, rename it so nobody picks it from the New Transaction menu by mistake.

In an account's ledger, each line names the other account it is set against. When a line's opposite side is a single account, the ledger shows that account's name (with the line's narration). When the opposite side is more than one account, there is no single account to name, so the ledger shows it as "Split Entry: Narration".

A line names the other account only when the opposite side of the entry is exactly one account — then that account is shown. If the opposite side has two or more accounts, the line is a split.

Worked examples (Dr = debit side, Cr = credit side):

• Dr Bank / Cr Party A / Cr Party B — Bank faces two accounts on the credit side, so Bank shows as a split. Party A and Party B each face a lone Bank on the debit side, so both show Bank.
• Dr Bank / Dr Cash / Cr Party A / Cr Party B — both sides have two accounts, so every line is a split.
• Dr Bank / Cr Cash — one account on each side, so each names the other: Bank shows Cash, Cash shows Bank.

It is the number of accounts on the opposite side that decides this, not the amounts.

Business Health is the one screen that answers "how is my business doing?". Open it from Accounting → Business Health in the left-hand menu.

It shows what you hold and owe today, what you earned and spent over a period you choose, where the money came from and went, and what needs acting on. Every figure is worked out live from your posted transactions each time the page loads — nothing is stored or cached — so it always agrees with your books.

The header carries a note reading "This is a beta release. Please verify numbers." It is there while the calculations are being confirmed against real dealerships; check anything that looks wrong against the underlying ledger, and tell us if it does not agree.

Reading the dates — the single most important thing

The screen mixes two kinds of number, and the line under the header tells you which window each is using:

Balances as of 31 Dec 2026 · Performance for 01 Jan to 31 Dec 2026, against the same period last year · amounts in CAD

• Balances — Cash & Bank, Receivables, Payables and Inventory — are as of the To date. They are cumulative: everything up to that day, including opening balances.
• Performance — Revenue, Cost of goods, Operating expenses and Profit — covers only the From–To range.

So changing the dates moves the two groups differently. That is intended, not a glitch, and it is the single most common misreading of this screen.

Choosing the period and the comparison

Press Filters in the header to open the panel on the right. It offers:

• Period — This financial year (the default), Last financial year, This month, or Custom range. The financial year comes from your accounting settings, not the calendar.
• From and To — these stay greyed out until you choose Custom range, because the other choices work their own dates out for you.
• Compare with — Same period last year (the default), Previous period, or No comparison. This is what the "vs prior" figures and the little up and down arrows measure against; choosing No comparison removes them entirely.

Press Apply to reload the screen. A custom range needs both dates, and the From cannot be after the To — Dealersip says so rather than loading something meaningless.

Refresh, beside Filters, re-runs the screen for the window already showing without changing any of your choices. Use it after posting or editing transactions elsewhere in Dealersip: the dashboard does not always notice changes made on another screen, and Refresh is the way to be certain you are looking at current figures.

The three signals

Most figures carry a badge, and the legend across the top spells them out:

• Good — within your normal range.
• Watch — drifting, worth a look.
• Risk — acting on this matters now.

Every signal states the rule that produced it in the line underneath, so you never have to guess why something is amber. Where there is not enough data to judge — no sales history, no comparison period — no badge is shown at all rather than a misleading one.

What counts as Watch or Risk is yours to set. Every threshold on this page — how many days customers may take to pay, what share of sales your vehicle costs may reach, how much aged stock is acceptable — is configured under Accounting Settings, in the Business Health Signals section. The defaults are calibrated for vehicle retail; the numbers quoted in this topic are those defaults.

Position — what you hold and owe

Four tiles across the top. Each whole tile is a button: click anywhere on it, not just the link at the bottom.

Cash & Bank

Every bank and cash account added together, as at the To date, shown the accountant's way with a Dr or Cr tag rather than a minus sign.

The badge asks whether cash covers what you owe suppliers. It reads Good once cash covers payables at least once over, and Watch below that. A credit balance means cash is overdrawn — the accounts net below zero — and that is always a Risk.

Clicking opens the list of accounts behind it, which add up to exactly the tile figure. Overdrawn accounts show in red. Open any account to see its ledger.

Receivables

Everything customers owe you, as at the To date.

The badge measures collection speed, not size. Dealersip works out how many days your customers take to pay — your receivables divided by your average daily sales over the last twelve months — and compares that with your setting (45 days by default, Risk beyond 60). A large receivable is not automatically bad; a slow one is. If you have no sales history yet, there is nothing to measure and no badge appears.

A credit balance here means customers are in advance or have overpaid, which is flagged as Watch because a receivable on the wrong side usually needs looking at.

Clicking opens the receivable accounts. From there, View by customer re-slices the same figures by who owes rather than by account, and View aging jumps you to the aging table further down the page.

Payables

Everything you owe suppliers, as at the To date.

The badge asks whether cash plus receivables cover it. A debit balance means you have overpaid or advanced a supplier, shown as Watch.

Clicking opens the payable accounts, with View by supplier to see the same money by who is owed.

How the by-customer and by-supplier lists are worked out

Both lenses start from exactly the same postings the tile itself uses and simply group them by party instead of by account. Because it is the same set of entries sliced differently, the list always adds up to the tile. Postings with no party attached roll into a single row reading Not tagged to a customer (or supplier), which is not clickable.

The consequence worth knowing: the list shows only what sits in receivable or payable accounts. If a party also has money somewhere else — an advance you paid them, or an opening balance entered on the other side — that sits in a different account and will not appear here. Their party ledger nets everything; this list deliberately does not.

Inventory

The value of vehicles in stock. This one is read from your vehicle records, not from the ledger, because a single lump-sum ledger balance cannot be aged or broken into units.

Only owned stock counts towards the figure. Consignment vehicles are listed as a count beside it, because that money was never yours — you only earn commission when they sell.

The badge is about how much of your own stock has gone stale: the share of its value more than 90 days old, against your setting (Watch above 25%, Risk above 40%).

Unlike the other three, this tile does not open a panel — it scrolls the page down to the Inventory aging table, where the same stock is broken out by age band.

Net receivable position

The ribbon under the tiles nets what customers owe you against what you owe suppliers. A positive figure means your money is tied up in the trade cycle — in effect you are financing your customers.

Clicking it opens two things. Net trade position is the bridge: receivables, less payables, netting to the figure on the ribbon; either row opens the accounts behind it. Path to cash is more useful in a squeeze — it starts from the cash you have today and adds each age band of receivables in turn, so you can see which band would clear an overdraft. Each band opens the customers who owe in it.

One caution the panel states itself: Cash if collected is a projection, not a balance. It mixes cash you hold with receivables you have yet to collect, so it will not match the customer list — that is the point of it.

Performance — what you earned and spent

Five figures for the period you chose. All but one open a breakdown; the ones that do show a small chevron beside the label.

• Revenue — what you earned in the period. Opens the accounts behind it, this period against the comparison.
• Cost of goods — the cost of the vehicles you actually sold. This is the one figure with no drill-down, for the reason in the next section; open Gross margin instead to see how it was worked out.
• Gross margin — the share of each sale left after the cost of the vehicle, before overhead. This is your product-level profitability and the core health number for a dealership. Its change is shown in points, not percent, because a margin moving from 20% to 23% has moved 3 points.
• Operating expenses — overhead: rent, salaries, advertising, bank charges. Judged as a share of revenue.
• Net profit — the bottom line, after both cost of goods and overhead.

Net profit opens the most useful panel on the screen: the full walk from revenue down to profit, with every line drillable, followed by a profit-to-cash bridge that answers "I am profitable, so where is the money?". It starts at net profit, subtracts what is tied up in receivables and stock, adds what you are holding back through payables, and ends at the change in your cash — tying to the Cash tile.

Where cost of goods comes from

Dealersip books a vehicle sale as revenue only. You debit vehicle purchases when you buy and record the sale when you sell; there is no cost entry per sale. This is the periodic method and is perfectly valid accounting.

It does mean your cost-of-goods ledger accounts stay empty until a year-end closing entry, so the dashboard cannot read cost from the ledger. Instead it works out the cost of the vehicles actually sold in the period from your purchase records — buying price plus reconditioning and other expenses on that vehicle. Nothing changes in how you keep your books.

Only owned vehicles count; consignment stock is excluded because you never owned it. And because the figure is derived rather than posted, the Cost of goods cell has no ledger to open — which is exactly why it has no drill-down.

If revenue exists but no vehicle cost was captured, Dealersip shows Watch and says so, rather than reporting a near-100% margin as if it were good news. That is a data gap: check that sold vehicles carry a buying price.

Where it comes from, where it goes

Two tables side by side, breaking the period down by account group: Revenue mix and Expense mix. Each shows the group, its amount, its share of the total as a bar, and its movement against the comparison period.

Open any row for its detail. A revenue group lists the actual deals behind it — date, invoice, customer, vehicle and amount — and any revenue posted by manual entry rather than from a sale is listed separately, so you can see which is which. Opening a deal shows that sale's transaction. An expense group lists the accounts inside it, this period against the comparison, and opening an account shows its ledger.

Discounts and returns reduce revenue, so they appear in brackets. When a discount grows, that is shown as a worsening even though the number itself is negative — more discount is worse.

Needs attention

Two cards, sorted by what costs you most if ignored.

Receivables aging

Who owes you, broken into Current, 31–60, 61–90 and 90+ days, with a coloured bar showing the shape of it at a glance.

Two things about this table are worth understanding properly.

It ages by days since the invoice, not by lateness. Payment terms are not recorded anywhere in Dealersip, so an invoice 45 days old on 60-day terms is not overdue — but it will still sit in the 31–60 band. The heading says Days since invoice for exactly this reason.

The age is measured to today, not to the To date, whenever the To date is in the future. Financial years usually end in the future, so ageing to the year end would report a car bought this morning as months old and push every open invoice into 90+. Balances still read as at the To date; only the age clock stops at today.

Only the four worst parties are named; the rest collapse into a single N other parties row. Below them sits Unapplied receipts & opening balances, captioned not tied to an invoice. That row exists because the aging is worked out invoice by invoice while the tile is a ledger balance: money received on account, opening balances and manual adjustments have no invoice to sit against. Without it the bands would not add up to the Accounts Receivable balance shown in the footer.

Opening a party shows their open items — each unpaid invoice, what has been applied to it, and what is still outstanding — rather than their ledger, because a ledger nets on-account cash away and would not explain the aging. A button there opens the full ledger when you want it.

Flags

Things Dealersip thinks are worth your attention, each stating the rule that raised it. There are three kinds:

• Old receivables — raised when more of your receivable balance is over 90 days old than your setting allows (10% by default), and escalated to Risk past 25%. It names the two worst customers. Opening it shows everyone owing in the 90+ band.
• A runaway expense group — the fastest-growing kind of expense, raised when it outpaces your sales growth by more than your setting (20 points by default). Opening it shows the expense breakdown.
• An account on the wrong side — an asset account sitting in credit, or a liability sitting in debit, which is usually an unreconciled entry or a posting error. Balances smaller than your rounding floor are ignored, and only the three worst are shown. Opening one shows that account's ledger.

Equity and fixed-asset accounts are deliberately left out of that last check, because Accumulated Depreciation and Dividends carry reversed balances by design and would flag forever.

When there is nothing to report the card says so: Nothing needs attention — no receivables past 90 days, no runaway expense group, and every account sits on its normal side.

Waiting on financiers

This section appears when you have financed deals a lender has not yet funded, and it exists because that money is invisible everywhere else.

On a financed sale the customer's part of the invoice is settled as soon as their downpayment lands — the rest was billed to the finance company, not to them. So the invoice shows nothing outstanding, the customer's aging is clean, and the balance never appears in the receivables aging at all. It is inside your Receivables total, but no invoice shows it as open. This is the only place it surfaces as somebody's to chase.

The ribbon shows the total owed by financiers, across how many deals and how many lenders, and whether anything has been waiting more than 60 days — the point at which a funding delay stops being normal.

Opening it lists each lender with what was billed, what has been funded, what is still owed and the age of the oldest unfunded deal. Opening a lender lists their individual deals, showing the customer's side of each invoice beside the lender's — so a deal where the buyer is short too is visible rather than being mistaken for a funding delay. From there you can open the invoice, the vehicle, or the customer's ledger.

Inventory aging

Your vehicles in stock by age, using the same 30/60/90 bands. For each band it shows owned units, the cash tied up in them, and a separate count of listed units.

The distinction matters: owned stock ties up your cash, listed stock does not. A consignment vehicle belongs to its owner, so it shows a unit count and no money.

Cash tied up is the vehicle's buying price plus the expenses recorded against it, so reconditioning is included. Ages count from the purchase date. Opening a band lists the actual vehicles in it, with stock number, days in stock and cost.

Where the heading can work out how fast you are selling, it also shows roughly how many days of supply your stock represents, based on how many vehicles you sold over the recent window set in your settings.

Finding your way from a figure to its detail

Everything on this screen opens to something, and every panel adds up to the figure that opened it. The routes are:

• Cash & Bank → the accounts → an account's ledger.
• Receivables → the accounts → View by customer → a customer's ledger. Or View aging to jump to the aging table.
• Payables → the accounts → View by supplier → a supplier's ledger.
• Net receivable position → the bridge and the path to cash → an age band → the customers in it → one customer's open invoices → their full ledger.
• Revenue or Operating expenses → the accounts behind it → an account's ledger.
• Gross margin → the revenue-less-cost bridge. Net profit → the profit walk and the profit-to-cash bridge.
• A revenue group → the deals behind it → a sale's transaction. An expense group → its accounts → a ledger.
• An aging row → that customer's open invoices. A flag → whatever it is about.
• Owed by financiers → the lenders → one lender's deals → the invoice, the vehicle or the customer.
• An inventory age band → the vehicles in it.

Panels open from the right over the dashboard. Close one with the × at its top right, or by clicking the greyed area outside it; the dashboard is untouched underneath, at the same scroll position and the same dates.

Questions this screen gets asked

Why doesn't a customer's aging total match their party ledger? Because they answer different questions. The aging shows what is open per invoice - the invoice amount minus the receipts applied to that invoice. The party ledger nets everything the party has, including payments on account that are not tied to any invoice. Example: an invoice of 12,70,000 with 25,000 applied leaves 12,45,000 open on that invoice, while a further 7,000 received "on account" brings the ledger to 12,38,000. Both are right. The aging drill shows the on-account line so you can see the gap.

Why doesn't the supplier list match that supplier's party ledger? Because they answer different questions, and the difference is always a balance the supplier has on the other side of the books.

Worked example. Seller 260725 was created with an opening balance of 25,07,000 Dr (money advanced to them), then a vehicle was bought from them for 76,84,000.

• Payables by supplier shows 76,84,000 Cr - only the payable side, because the list must add up to the Payables tile.
• The party ledger shows 51,77,000 Cr - it nets everything, including the 25,07,000 advance.

Neither figure is wrong. Receivables and payables are reported gross, never automatically netted, because standard accounting does not offset an asset against a liability. The advance is an asset you hold; the purchase is a liability you owe.

What to do about it:

• Before paying a supplier, go by the party ledger, not the list. Paying the list figure would overpay by the amount of the advance.
• To actually settle net, post a set-off journal (Dr Accounts Payable / Cr the advance account) for the smaller amount. Otherwise the advance sits on the books forever.
• Check the party type's Dr opening account. For a supplier party type, a Dr opening belongs in an "Advances to Suppliers" account under Other Current Assets - not in Accounts Receivable. If it is pointed at a receivable account, supplier advances inflate your Receivables tile and make the collection-speed badge meaningless, because it looks like customers owe you money they never did.

The customer list says one figure and the party ledger says another. Why?

Same principle as the supplier question above, but it catches people out more often because the gap can be small enough to look like a rounding error. It isn't - it is a balance the party holds on the other side of the books.

Worked example (real). Customer KISHOR KUMAR YADAV, as of 31 Dec 2026:

Date	Voucher	Account	Amount
04 Jul 2026	Journal 71	Account Receivables	6,95,000 Dr
17 Jul 2026	Purchase Payments 114	Financers Payable	5,000 Dr

• Receivables by customer shows 6,95,000 - only the receivable account, because the list has to add up to the Receivables tile.
• The party ledger shows 7,00,000 Dr - it adds every account the party appears in, including the 5,000.

Both are right. The reason is that this party is two relationships in one record: a retail customer who bought a vehicle, and a finance company you deal with. The 5,000 is a debit sitting on Financers Payable, which means you have paid them 5,000 more than you owed them as a financer. That is money owed to you by a supplier - nothing to do with the vehicle they bought.

How to tell which side a difference lives on: open the party ledger and read the account name on each row. Receivable-type accounts are the sales side; payable-type accounts are the supplier or finance side. The difference between the two figures will always be the rows on the side the list does not cover.

What to do about it: nothing, unless you intend to settle net. If you do, post a set-off journal for the smaller amount so both sides clear together - otherwise the 5,000 sits on the books indefinitely. And before chasing the customer for payment, go by the party ledger, not the list, so you know the full position with them.

Which report should I open from an aging figure? The open-items view, not the party ledger - it lists each unpaid invoice, the on-account amount, and the ledger balance they net to, so it explains both numbers at once. There is a button on it to open the full ledger if you want the history.

Why is the aging "current / 31-60 / 61-90 / 90+" not about being overdue? Payment terms are not recorded anywhere in Dealersip, so the buckets count days since the invoice date, not days late. An invoice 45 days old on 60-day terms is not overdue, but it will sit in the 31-60 band.

What is the "Unapplied receipts & opening balances" line? Money received that is not tied to any invoice, plus opening balances. It exists so the aging table adds up exactly to the Receivables tile. Without it the buckets would silently disagree with the balance.

Why does a drill figure differ from the account ledger's closing balance? The drill shows the period figure; the ledger's closing balance is cumulative and includes the opening balance. Example: an income account opens at 82,000, earns 2,37,18,090 in the period, and closes at 2,38,00,090. The dashboard correctly reports 2,37,18,090 as this period's revenue - including the opening would double-count last year's income.

Why does an income account have an opening balance at all? Because the previous year was not closed. In fully closed books, income and expense accounts reset to zero each financial year and their balance rolls into retained earnings. A lingering opening balance on a sales account means the year-end close has not been run. It does not affect the dashboard (which uses period figures), but it is worth fixing.

The screen shows a big loss, but every car I sold made money. Why?

Almost always this means some sales never reached your accounts. Revenue and cost are read from two different places:

• Revenue comes from the ledger - only sales that were posted to accounting.
• Cost of goods comes from your vehicle records - every car whose sale date falls in the period, whether accounting knows about it or not.

So a car that left your stock without its accounting entry adds its full cost with no revenue against it. Each one is a pure paper loss. Nothing is wrong with the business; the two sides are simply counting different cars.

Worked example (real). A financial year showed revenue 51.68 Lakh, cost of goods 1.06 Crore, a loss of 54.09 Lakh and a gross margin of -104.7%. There were 15 sales in the period but only 7 had an accounting entry - so 15 cars' cost was being charged against 7 cars' revenue. The 8 missing sales carried 54,66,800 of cost and 55,21,463 of revenue that never reached the ledger. Once posted, the year read revenue 1.07 Crore, cost 1.06 Crore and a profit of 1,12,714. A thin profit, not a large loss.

Three signs it is this and not a real loss:

1. Cost of goods is larger than every vehicle you have ever bought. That is arithmetically impossible, so the cost side is counting something the revenue side is not.
2. Gross margin is worse than -100%. Cost cannot exceed revenue by more than the revenue itself unless the two sides cover different cars.
3. The number of sales in the period is more than the number of sale entries in your books.

Why it happens: a journal entry is created when a sale is saved. Sales made before you switched the accounting module on, and never re-opened since, have no entry. The gap is historic and one-off, not something that recurs on new sales.

How to fix it: open each affected sale and save it again. Dealersip builds its journal entry on save, and revenue appears where it belongs. Check the first one to confirm the entry is dated on the sale date, not today - otherwise the revenue lands in the wrong period and the loss simply moves. Before saving, also check any sale showing a zero margin: a selling price that was never entered defaults to cost, and re-saving would lock that in.

Do purchases without accounting entries cause the same problem?

Not to your profit, but they do distort what you hold and owe. Because cost of goods is read from the vehicle records either way, a purchase with no accounting entry still gets costed correctly when the car sells, and it still appears in the Inventory tile. What is missing is the other half:

• Payables are understated - the supplier bill was never recorded, so you cannot see that you owe it.
• Cash or bank is overstated, if the payment was never recorded either.
• The profit-to-cash bridge will not reconcile, because stock arrived without any money or debt moving to pay for it.

The fix is the same: re-save the purchase so its entry is built. It is worth checking both directions whenever the dashboard's profit and its cash position tell different stories.

(For support, not the manual: sales with no accounting entry are rows in Sales_UV where no Ac_Vouchers row has intSaleId = idSaleID; purchases are Purchase rows with no voucher linked. Compare the count of sales in the window against the count of sale vouchers - if they differ, this is the cause.)

Why did gross margin show 100%? Because no cost had been recorded. A 100% margin is impossible in vehicle retail - it means the cost side is missing, not that you are extraordinarily profitable. Since the cost is now worked out from the vehicles sold, this reads correctly. If it ever shows near 100% again, check that sold vehicles carry a buying price.

Why is a percentage change enormous (like +30442%)? Because the comparison period was almost empty. If last year's same window recorded only 81,700 and this year recorded 2.49 crore, the percentage is arithmetically right but meaningless. The drill shows the prior figure next to the current one and says so in plain words.

Why do discounts show in brackets, like (16,652)? Discounts and returns reduce revenue, so they are shown in brackets the way accountants write a deduction. When a discount grows, that is shown as an increase in red - because more discount is worse - even though it is reducing the revenue figure.

Why is "Cash if collected" different from the list of customers? It is a projection, not a balance. It is today's cash plus everything collected down to that age band, so it mixes cash with receivables. The customer list only adds up to the receivables in that band. They are not supposed to match; the column header and a note say so.

Why does "Cash if collected" show the same number in every age band? Because the column is a running total, and there was nothing to collect. It starts at your cash today and adds each band's collectible amount as it walks down Current -> 31-60 -> 61-90 -> 90+. When a band has nothing to collect (its Amount shows "-"), the running total does not move - so if no band has anything, every row repeats your cash-today figure. That is correct, not a glitch. Worked example: cash today 9,50,000 and no open invoices in any band -> all four rows read 9,50,000. With real receivables it climbs: 1,00,000 in Current and 40,000 in 90+ would read 10,50,000 -> 10,50,000 -> 10,50,000 -> 10,90,000, stepping up only where there is something to collect. How to read it: the Amount column is the receivables in that band (what you could collect); the Cash if collected column is the projected cash once you have collected everything down to and including that band. A common reason every band is empty while the Receivables tile is not: the receivable is an opening balance, which has no invoice date, so it cannot be aged into a band - it sits in the "Unapplied receipts & opening balances" line and does not appear on the path to cash.

I am profitable but have no cash. Why? This is the most common and most important question, and the Net profit drill answers it directly with a profit-to-cash bridge: it starts from net profit, subtracts what is tied up in receivables and stock, adds what you are holding back through payables, and shows the change in cash - ending at the same figure as your Cash tile. Profit sitting in unpaid invoices and unsold vehicles is not money in the bank. Collecting and turning stock is what converts it.

The flag says "Trade in Payables sits on the debit side". What do I do?

This means one trade-in was recorded in two different accounts - the debt was created in one and cleared in another, so neither cancelled.

What you will see:

• The trade-in account holds a debit balance. It is a liability account, so a debit there means either you overpaid someone or something is filed in the wrong place. Neither is true here.
• Accounts Payable is too high by exactly the same amount - a bill no supplier will ever claim.
• The Payables tile is still correct, because the two errors cancel. Only the account-level check catches it.

How to fix it:

1. Open the sale with the trade-in and save it again. Dealersip rebuilds the entry using the correct account and the flag clears on its own. This is the fix in almost every case.
2. If the sale cannot be edited, post the balancing journal shown in the Setup section above.
3. Check Setup -> Accounting settings: the trade-in account should be the same account as Accounts Payable. Fix it there so it stops recurring.

Then rename the old trade-in account so nobody selects it by hand; accounts cannot be hidden from the pickers, so renaming is the way to do it.

Worth knowing: this never affected your profit, your net worth, or your total payables. It only misstated two lines that offset each other. But it made both accounts impossible to reconcile, so it is worth clearing rather than ignoring.

What does a credit balance mean on each kind of account?

• On cash or bank: overdrawn, or an unreconciled entry.
• On a receivable: the customer is in advance or has overpaid.
• On a payable (shown as a debit there): you have advanced or overpaid the supplier.

The dashboard flags these because an account sitting on the wrong side is usually an error worth checking.

Numbers and formatting

• Balances are shown the accountant's way - Dr or Cr, never a minus sign.
• Deductions (discounts, returns) are shown in brackets.
• Number style follows the dealership's country: India groups 12,34,567 and uses Lakh / Crore (spelled out so "Cr" is never confused with credit); Canada and the USA group 1,234,567 and use K / M / B.

What this screen does not do

• Payment terms are not recorded, so aging is by age, not lateness.
• The signals judge against thresholds you set yourself, and those settings are shared across the whole business rather than set per dealership.
• Cost of goods covers vehicles only - parts and service cost is not included.
• In the profit-to-cash bridge, everything that is not operating working capital (owner funds, loans, asset purchases) is grouped into a single "Financing & investing" line.
• Trade-in debt is not tracked separately from supplier debt. Both sit in Accounts Payable. This is safe while every trade-in is settled by offsetting the customer's bill, which is the normal case. It stops being enough the day you need to pay off a loan on a traded-in car (the money goes to a finance company on a deadline, not to the customer) or buy a car outright from a customer (you owe them cash). Both are real payables that behave nothing like a supplier bill, and they would need a trade-in payable account of their own. Flag this as a known limit rather than letting it look settled.