Handing the numbers to your accountant

Every quarter someone has to hand the numbers to an accountant, a bookkeeper or the software they use. Retyping a spreadsheet from a screen is how a sales figure ends up changing three weeks later.

Reports → Accounting export does it instead: pick the period and the package, and download a zip. Generating an export, and mapping accounts in Company Settings → Accounting, are for owners and admins.

What comes out

One zip with seven files and a README describing them:

The first six are lists. Nothing in them is recalculated: each row is read straight from a document, so any figure traces back to it.

The journal is checked before the export is made: for every day in the period, its debits must equal its credits, or the export is refused instead of handing over books that won't import. Tax is on its own line, because your return is built from it. Write-offs appear in the journal as bad debt.

The journal doesn't cover everything. Purchases and refunds have no journal entries (they're in their own files), and stock is journaled only when goods ship or a delivery is received, not for production, waste, adjustments, stocktakes, returns or project use.

A period with a final invoice that deducted deposits can't be exported yet, because that day's journal doesn't balance.

Which shape

Pick the package in Shaped for on the form:

• QuickBooks Online: accounts matched by name.
• Xero: accounts matched by code.
• OrderDen CSV: every column named in full, for reading yourself, for other software, or for an accountant who'd rather do the import.

Only sales.csv changes shape for QuickBooks and Xero, to their import columns. The other files, and the journal, have the same columns in all three.

Mapping your chart of accounts

OrderDen knows it sold something taxable and took a card payment. It doesn't know your business calls those accounts 4000, 2200 and 1201, and it won't guess. A figure quietly landing in the wrong account is found at year end, by which point it's in a filing.

So Company Settings → Accounting asks, once, for:

• Sales, cost of goods sold and inventory.
• The sales tax control account, where the journal posts all tax.
• One account for each active spend category, so expenses land where your accountant expects.
• A tax code for each tax rate (inactive ones included), used on sales.csv.
• An account for each payment method, all seven whether you use them or not: the bank account each kind of money lands in.
• Accounts for Marketplace and payment fees, bad debt, client credit and deposits held.

Each box shows, grayed out, what that package usually calls it. Accept all defaults (named for the package) saves them all at once. Fill blanks with defaults fills the empty boxes and waits for you to save. A mapping is per package, because the same business may export to QuickBooks for its accountant and to plain CSV for its own files.

An export is refused while anything is unmapped, and the message names what is missing. Two cases no mapping fixes: a purchase with no category and a line that isn't stock, and spending in a category you've deactivated. Give the purchase a category, or reactivate the category, and try again.

To see an export before your chart of accounts is finished, tick Put anything unmapped into a suspense account. Everything without an account lands in 9999, and the README lists what went there.

Changed since the books went over

This is the copy I am sending is ticked by default. It records how far you've handed over.

After that, any invoice, credit note, purchase or expense dated on or before the end of that period, including earlier periods, that someone edits is listed on the accounting page under Changed since the books went over, with what changed and when. Generating any export, even without the tick, starts that list again from that moment. Invoices and expenses dated in a period you've sent show a note on their own page saying so.

Nothing is locked. An invoice that needs correcting gets corrected, whoever already has a copy. What matters is knowing that correcting it means telling someone, and that's what the list is for.

Send it to your accountant

Type your accountant's address in Send to before you generate, and we email them a link to the file with the period in the subject. We remember the address, so next quarter the box is already filled in. Leave it blank to download the file and send it yourself.

The link opens the stored file once whoever clicks it has signed in to your workspace, so an accountant who isn't a member of it should be sent the download instead. If the email can't go, the export is still made and kept, and the page says why. The activity trail records who it was sent to.

Reminders when a period closes

Under Your accountant on the accounting page, pick Each month or Each quarter to be reminded. On the first of the month after a month or quarter closes, owners and admins get one Accounting period closed notification in the bell and by email, linking to the export with that period filled in. It's off until you choose. Each member can turn the email off under Personal Settings → Notifications.

Every export is kept

Each zip is stored exactly as it was generated. When your accountant asks in March for what you sent in January, send the same file, not a new read of a database that has moved on. The history on the page shows the 25 most recent, with what each contained and a download.

Through the API

All of this is in the public API: GET and PUT /accounting/map read and replace the mapping, POST /accounting/exports generates one (returning 422 with the unmapped accounts when it refuses, and emailing the link when you send sendTo), GET and PUT /accounting/handoff read and save the accountant's address and the reminder, GET /accounting/exports (the 50 most recent) and /accounting/exports/{id}/download fetch what went over, and GET /accounting/changed-since-export lists what's changed since.