Business Health

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:

• 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.