Getting started with Accounting

Right, so you've just got your new Brightpearl account. Work through these steps to get familiar with the day to day jobs that you'll be doing in Brightpearl. We're going to reset your data afterwards so it doesn't matter what you put in for now.

Your Brightpearl account comes pre-configured so that you can crack on with getting stuff done right away, but if you want to get dirty with settings, then read getting started with settings. If you've chosen for your customers to be called "clients", then read "Clients" for "Customers" below.

1. Create a sale and invoice a client

Time to start earning some money! Let's raise a customer invoice. This is done in the Sales area of Brightpearl, and when the sale is invoiced, it will put information into the Accounting area. If you're raising your invoices in another system, and just want to record income from a customer, then skip to step 4.

1. Hover over the Sales top tab and click New Quote/invoice from the drop down menu.
2. Click the "Add a new customer" button (it might say "Add new Client")
3. Pop some details in, just a company, email address, firstname and lastname will do for now. Don't use your own email address, since that's assigned to you as a staff member.
4. Save the contact.
5. Click "New Sale" to create a new sale for this contact.
6. Click "Add row" if there isn't one already a row in the Products and Prices area and fill in a description, choose a sales code (more on this later), set a tax rate and an Amount/Rate.
7. Click the green Save button to save the sale (which is still in "draft" phase).
8. Click the green "Invoice" button to close the sale and turn it into an invoice.

You'll now see that the sale is locked, and the reference shown at the top left is the Invoice number, starting SI- (Sales Invoice). You're now owed money from the customer, taking us to the next step...

2. Checking customer debt and receiving a payment

From the Accounts zone menu (the red horizontal menu), click Customers:Customer debt. This shows you what your customers owe you, and how long it's been due. You'll see the value of the invoice you just raised.

We're now going to record money received against that invoice we just raised.

1. Click the cash icon (green notes not the money bag) on the right hand side of the screen to go to the payment allocation screen.
2. Here you'll see all the outstanding invoices for the customer. Choose the bank account into which you're receiving the money (bank current account).
3. Choose the date received (today).
4. You've received the money by BACS, enter "abc123" as the reference, we'll use this later.
5. Click "pay in full", since you've received the whole payment.
6. Click "allocate payment" to allocate the money received into your bank account against the Sales Invoice.

You'll see that the customer now has no outstanding invoices. Go back to the Customer debt screen, and you'll see it's empty.

3. Search for a transaction

In the accounts quick search box, at the very top of the screen, type "abc123" and hit Enter or click GO. This will take you to the General Ledger screen (which is all your transactions), showing everything that relates to reference abc123.

You'll find this simple and powerful search very useful as you get to know Brightpearl better.

You can enter invoice references, details, or an amount in this box. Once you reach the end of this guide, come back and search for various things that you've entered along the way.

4. Recording sales made outside Brightpearl

If you're not using Brightpearl for invoicing, then you don't need to create an invoice for every sale as above, you need to either just record a "bank receipt" for general money received (like bank interest), or a "quick customer invoice" for other income. Let's create a quick invoice.

1. From the accounts menu, click Customers:Enter quick invoice.
2. Search for the customer you created in step 1, or else create a customer using the "Add a new customer" button.
3. Choose the tax date (the invoice date), and the due date will be set to 30 days later by default.
4. Leave the "invoice/credit ref" on Auto for the moment.
5. Pop a description of the sale into the "Details" field.
6. Enter a money amount into the "Net1" field. If you have just one row, you can type in the "total" box and Brightpearl will work out the tax.
7. Click "submit" to record the sale.

As per step 2, you can now see the balance on the customer account at Customers:Customer debt.

5. Create a bank receipt for a loan received

"Bank accounts" in pearl are where you track how much money you have moving around on a day to day basis - and may not necessarily reflect your high street bank accounts. Bank receipts are used to record money received without a customer invoice reference (such as a tax rebate). Bank payments are used to record money paid out without a supplier invoice (such as bank interest or staff wages).

Let's receive some money into our main bank account as a loan from a director.

1. We're in the Accounting area of Brightpearl already, so click "Banking:View bank accounts".
2. This is the list of bank accounts already set up for you, which you can edit later.
3. Hover over the top account on the list and click "receive money".
4. Choose code 2300 (Loans) from the Nominal code menu. Since Brightpearl is a full double entry system, every movement of money needs to be recorded against a code which either shows on your Balance Sheet, or on your Profit and Loss report.
5. Enter some details, perhaps "Loan from John".
6. Loans are not taxable, so leave the tax code as T9.
7. Enter an amount (500.00) in the Net field.
8. Click the green Submit button.

In the green message confirming the save you'll get a transaction reference. Every transaction is given a number, which you should write on any paperwork that relates to this and file it away appropriately.

Now go back to the bank account list and see the balances have risen. We're now going to do some work with suppliers.

6. Enter a supplier invoice

If you're paying money to a supplier that gives you credit (ie you don't pay as soon as the invoice arrives) then you need to record the invoice in Brightpearl for payment later.

1. Dig out a recent supplier invoice from your records.
2. From the accounts menu, click Suppliers:Enter quick invoice.
3. Create a new supplier using the "Add a new supplier" button at the top right, enter the details of your supplier or just make one up.
4. When you're back on the supplier invoice screen, search for the supplier by name or company.
5. Set the date as per the invoice date on your supplier invoice.
6. Enter the supplier's invoice reference.
7. Add any details if you want. You'll still have the paperwork for a full itemised breakdown of course.
8. Enter the net, tax and the relevant tax code. If a supplier invoice contains items across multiple codes (eg "purchases" and "carriage") you can choose to add extra rows if you need to. For this example, make sure that you've got some tax in there (assuming you're VAT registered).
9. Click the green Submit button.

You'll get another transaction reference in the green confirmation box. Put this on your paperwork and file it away. If you see a number scribbled on a supplier invoice (we like to put a circle round them too), then you know it's been entered into your Brightpearl account.

7. See what you owe your suppliers

Just like your customer debt, your supplier debt is easily managed in Brightpearl.

• From the accounts menu, click Suppliers:Supplier debt to see the list of suppliers that you owe money to, and when the invoices are due.

There's also another way to see this information:

• From the accounts menu, click Suppliers:Reports:Invoice list (all), which will show you the individual invoices and how much has been paid against them.

8. Reporting

All the information you're entering goes to build up the reports that help you make educated business decisions. Let's have a look at a couple of those now.

Profit and Loss report

From the accounts menu, click Reports:Profit and Loss. You'll see that the sales and purchases we've entered so far are showing on the report. Hopefully your sales are greater than your purchases and you can see the bottom line profit.

You can see how easy it is to get a real grip on your financial position, as long as you keep your bookkeeping up to date. Note how the loan we entered in step 5 doesn't appear on your Profit and Loss (P&L) - this is because you didn't make a profit, you just swapped cash for a "liability", which shows on your Balance Sheet.

Balance Sheet

From the accounts menu, click Reports:Balance Sheet. This shows how much your business owns. Note how the sales and purchases are not on the balance sheet, but the loan is. The profit and loss balance comes through at the bottom, since if you made a profit, then this is money in the bank against the value of your company!

There's a lot more information you can get from Brightpearl, but we'll cover that in a separate guide.

9. Import a bank statement

This is really going to save you time! We're going to import a statement from your online banking and create a whole load of entries really quickly, with no data entry to do.

1. Log in to your online banking
2. Go to the statements area, and download a recent statement in OFX format.
3. Save it somewhere that you're going to remember!
4. Back in Brightpearl, from the accounts menu, click Banking:Import statements, then choose your current bank account (1200).
5. Browse for your file on your computer and upload it to Brightpearl.
6. All the transactions will be added to a parking space from where we're going to create entries in the accounts.
7. Click "match imported transactions".
8. On the left hand side you can see the statement entries. Click one.
9. On the right hand side are the entries in Brightpearl that match that amount already (probably none).
10. Choose to create a new transaction, using the information from the statement import.
11. Click "Create new", and the entry on the left hand side will be removed.
12. Move onto the next.

Now that you've entered some transactions, let's have a look at the bank account history.

1. Click Banking:View bank accounts from the accounts menu.
2. Hover over the current bank account (1200) and click "Activity report".
3. You can see all the entries you've just created off the statement, plus the Sales Receipt we entered in step 2 with reference abc123.

10. Explore the dashboard

Now that you've created a number of transactions, we can start to see how we find out what's going on in your business.

1. Click Dashboard from the accounts menu (or just Dash from the red ribbon).
2. You'll see a number of "widgets" - the customer and supplier debt overview, your bank balances, and the recent account activity.
3. Add more widgets if you need using the "add widget" link at the top right.
4. Click the header and drag widgets around if you'd rather they were in a different position.
5. Click the settings icon for the "Accounts chart" widget, and you can see how you can change the timeframe displayed.
6. Click a data point on the accounts chart widget to drill all the way down to the data points that make up the chart.

11. Finishing up

So actually this isn't quite a Ten Steps, but hey, it's given you a good overview of some of the basics. We go into more detail on each of the topics within their own section of our documentation.

If you want to reset your data and start over, then read about resetting your data here.

Hungry for more?

Getting started with CRM

Introduction to bookkeeping