Read the ledger

Who this is for

Landlords and property managers who want to see what happened in their accounts: payments in, bills and payouts out, money moved between accounts. Anyone on your team can read the ledger. Nothing is changed from it: every entry is made by the screen where the money was recorded.

Before you start

• Ledger is a tab on Accounting, under Money in the menu.
• The ledger shows entries for the accounts on the Trust Accounts tab. See Your bank accounts.

Steps

1. Open Accounting and click Ledger.
2. Pick a view: - Activity (the one it opens on): one row for each thing that happened, such as a tenant payment, an owner payout or an expense. The steps of one payment on the same day are one row. A check deposited on a later day gets a second row that day, "Deposited" (Moved between accounts). - Every entry: each credit and debit as it was written, with its account and source. This is the view an accountant asks for.
3. Narrow the list with All Accounts, All Properties, From and To. In Every entry you can also pick Credit or Debit.
4. Read a row in Activity: - What happened: a name such as "Tenant payment", "Owner payout", "Deposit returned" or "Opening balance". - Effect: Money in (green), Money out (red), or Moved between accounts, Applied to a charge, Correction, Fee or Starting balance (gray). - Amount: what the activity came to. A negative amount shows with a minus sign, such as −$50.00. - A voided expense stays in the list, marked Voided. The Correction row dated the day of the void puts the money back and names the expense it cancels.
5. Click Show breakdown under a row to see its entries, each with its date, description, account and amount. Hide breakdown closes it.
6. The list shows the last 12 months. Click Load more for more rows, and Show older for entries from before then.

Example

Lena Brooks receives a $1,200.00 check from Carlos Rivera for November rent and deposits it the same day.

• In Activity, she sees one row: "Tenant payment", Money in, $1,200.00.
• She clicks Show breakdown. The note says "These steps move one payment between accounts. They are not extra payments." The lines show the check waiting in Undeposited funds, then moved into her operating account.
• In Every entry, the same payment is several rows, each one a credit or a debit.

What happens next

• To check the ledger against your bank, reconcile each account with its statement. See Reconcile your bank account.
• A mistake is fixed where the money was recorded, such as voiding a payment, not on the ledger. The fix adds new entries; the old ones stay.

If something looks wrong

• "Some steps are hidden by the account filter." or "...by the property filter." A payment moved through an account or property your filter leaves out. Clear the filter to see every step.
• An activity shows a different amount from the entries added up. Steps that move one payment between accounts aren't extra money, so the activity's amount isn't their sum.
• "No ledger entries". Nothing has been recorded in the accounts and dates you picked. Check your filters, or click Show older.
• There is no Credit or Debit filter. It is only in Every entry.