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Accounting and ledgers

Manifold keeps a general ledger of everything that moved money or stock. Connect Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks Online and that ledger is sent there as journals, each posting once, and checked against the trial balance. A posting is one balanced entry: debits and credits by account.

What Manifold records

Every receipt, dispatch, supplier invoice, sales invoice, payment, refund, write-off and stocktake makes one balanced posting: debits and credits by account code. You do not enter postings by hand. They come from the work done in Manifold.

The books begin at the opening stocktake, which completes when you go live. It posts the stock you hold, at cost, with any open receivables, payables and unsettled payments, against opening balances (account 3900). Anything that happened while the organization was read-only is not in the books. The system you were using kept those. See Stocktakes and Read-only mode and going live.

The reports are under Financials:

General ledger
Every posting, debit and credit by account, over a period. Narrow it by source or by account code.
Trial balance
Each account's debits, credits and net over a period. The totals always balance.
Inventory valuation
Every SKU on hand at cost, highest value first, with the account totals.
Cost of goods sold
What sold cost over a period, by day or week.
COGS ledger
Every cost entry behind those figures: cost of sales, corrections, reversals and write-downs.
Payout reconciliation
A payout is the money a payment provider, such as Stripe or Shopify Payments, pays into your bank. Per provider and currency: payments no payout has settled, payout lines that matched nothing, and the payouts themselves.

Postings are never changed. A correction is a new posting on its own date: a supplier invoice that arrives after the goods sold, a landed cost, or a refund.

Accounts

The chart of accounts is under Settings › Chart of accounts. Every SKU posts to three accounts: inventory (1400 by default), sales (4000) and cost of sales (5000). Everything else posts to fixed control accounts (accounts Manifold posts to itself, which you do not post to by hand), such as 1200 accounts receivable, 2000 accounts payable, 2200 tax payable, 4100 shipping income and one clearing account per payment provider (where a payment waits until the provider pays it into your bank). Defaults can be renamed but not renumbered or removed.

When Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks is connected, its chart comes into Manifold's. If your accounting system has an account with the same code as one here, that account replaces Manifold's; the rest are added. Accounts that come from the accounting system are marked kept in Xero (or MYOB, or QuickBooks) and are edited there, not in Manifold. To pull in an account you just added there, press Sync from Xero (or MYOB, or QuickBooks) on the chart. A sync never deletes an account: one archived there is archived here.

Cash or accrual

Set the basis under Settings › Tax › Accounting basis. Accrual records a sale or a bill when it is issued. Cash records it when the money moves; until then it waits in a sales awaiting payment (2300) or bills awaiting payment (1350) account. Receivables and payables are kept either way. Which basis to use is a question for your accountant.

  • Before the books open, choose the basis under The books open on and save.
  • After they open, the basis changes only from the first day of a coming financial year. Pick the day under Move to cash from (or Move to accrual from) and press Schedule the change. Until that day you can move it or Take back.
  • The basis can change once a week. The card says when the next change can be made.

Connecting Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks

Each is an app. The person installing it must hold everything the app asks for, so it is usually an owner or admin. Xero is used below; MYOB and QuickBooks work the same way.

Before you go live

  1. Install the app. In the setup walk, pick it in the Which accounting software do you use? step. Or install it from the App Store. Once installed it appears under Apps in the admin's sidebar.
  2. Open it: the walk's Set up Xero step (press Sign in to Xero), or Apps › Xero (press Connect to Xero). Choose one set of books: a Xero organisation, a MYOB company file (you must be its administrator) or a QuickBooks Online company. Manifold keeps one set of books in step per app.
  3. In the walk's Set up Xero step, the Your accounts screen comes next: choose where each Manifold account lands in your chart, or Create it in Xero. A suggestion is made for each. Press Continue. (Connected from Apps › Xero instead? You map the accounts on its Account map page after go-live.)
  4. The next screen, How to send, refuses until you go live, with a message saying so. Leave it for now.

After you go live

  1. Open Apps › Xero. On the Connection page, choose the sending settings and press Save. Nothing is sent until you do.
  2. Clear your existing balances in the accounting system.
  3. Check the Reconciliation page. It and the Account map page appear once the settings are saved.

Connecting a different set of books later lets the first one go. Reconnecting the same books keeps their settings, map and history.

The connection is refused when:

  • The books are kept in a different currency from your Manifold home currency, or the provider will not say which. Connect books kept in your home currency.
  • Your home currency has three decimal places (such as KWD or BHD). These systems carry two, and Manifold will not round your books to fit.

Sending settings

Choose these on the Connection page, then press Save. You can save them only once your books are open, so go live first. Saving before go-live is refused with a message saying to go live first. Sync now is unavailable until the settings are saved, and nothing is sent until you save them, so come back here as soon as you go live.

Journals
One journal a day sums each day's postings per account: a short, readable ledger. One journal per posting sends every invoice, payment, receipt and dispatch as its own journal: the most detail, and the most journals.
Accounts
Map onto my … chart: you choose the account each Manifold account posts to. Create Manifold's accounts in …: the app adds each Manifold account to your chart under its own code.
Start
Day by day from the opening stocktake sends every day since go-live. Use it when the accounting system holds none of Manifold's figures yet. From a date sends everything from go-live to the day before as one journal, each account's total, dated the day before; then each day from the date. The date can be any day from go-live to today. Either way the books start from the same opening balance. The start is fixed once the first journal is sent.

The journals are manual journals in Xero, general journals in MYOB and journal entries in QuickBooks. Manifold does not create invoices, bills or payments there.

Your existing balances

The first journal sent carries the opening stocktake: stock at cost on the inventory accounts, open receivables on 1200, open payables on 2000 and unsettled payments on the clearing accounts, all against 3900 opening balances. Your accounting system probably holds its own inventory, receivables and payables balances from before. Left alone, those would count twice.

Clear the old balances against the account 3900 maps to, with a journal of your own in the accounting system dated the day before go-live, or reverse them another way your accountant prefers. For example, if Xero shows inventory of 40,000 and Manifold's opening stocktake values stock at 42,500, journal 40,000 out of inventory against opening balances in Xero. Manifold's opening journal then puts 42,500 in, and inventory in Xero reads 42,500.

The account map

In the setup walk's Your accounts screen, and once the sending settings are saved on the app's Account map page, each Manifold account is listed beside a choice of the provider's accounts. A suggestion is filled in where one fits, and marked suggested. Change any, then press Save map. An account marked kept in Xero is already that account and needs nothing.

Xero's receivable and payable controls, MYOB's trade debtors and creditors controls and header accounts, and QuickBooks' Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable do not take journals, so they are not offered. Map 1200 and 2000 onto ordinary accounts instead.

Receivables and payables arrive as journal lines, not invoices and bills. Do not also enter Manifold's sales invoices or supplier bills in the accounting system, or they count twice. Aged receivables and payables, and who owes what, are in Manifold.

If one posting on a day goes to an unmapped account, that whole day waits until you map it. Nothing is dropped; it goes on the next sync after you map it.

Sending and checking

The app sends new journals every 15 minutes. Press Sync now on the Connection page to send at once. Each posting goes once. If the provider refuses a journal, for example because the period is locked there, its postings are sent again in a new journal on a later sync. Unlock the period or fix the cause in the accounting system.

The Reconciliation page puts the trial balance beside what was sent, per account: ledger debits and credits, sent debits and credits. It reads Xero is in step with the ledger when they match, or says how many accounts are not yet in step and how many journals are on the way. Any reason journals are waiting (settings not saved, accounts not mapped, recent refusals) is shown above the table.

What is not sent

  • Tax codes. See Tax codes below.
  • Invoices, bills and payments. Only journals are sent.
  • The bank. Manifold stops at each payment provider's clearing account (and 1195 for money paid to suppliers). Code the bank deposit or withdrawal to that clearing account in the accounting system's bank feed.
  • Anything while read-only. Nothing is sent until the organization goes live.

Tax codes

Tax is posted to 2200 tax payable in Manifold, but journal lines reach the accounting system without a tax code (Xero No Tax, MYOB N-T, QuickBooks none). So a GST, BAS or VAT return prepared in the accounting system will not include tax on Manifold's sales and purchases. Take those figures from Manifold's trial balance (account 2200) instead, and agree the method with your accountant before your first return.

Disconnecting

Press Disconnect on the Connection page and confirm. Sending stops; journals already in the accounting system stay there. The accounts the app kept in Manifold's chart become Manifold's again, as they last were, and editable. Uninstalling the app does the same.

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