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Best Practices
Updated over a year ago

Accounts

Less accounts means less decisions, making it easier for the Bookbot to help you! 10% less accounts can increase productivity by 100% !

For example
On Expenses, instead of having two accounts:

  • Gasoline

  • Maintenance

You could only have one generic account: 

  • Transportation

 And control your granular details with hashtags:
​ #gasoline
​ #maintence
​ 
 You could go even further, replacing all expenses accounts by:
​ Fixed Expenses
​ Variable Expenses

Of course all the above works in the same way for incoming (revenue) accounts. 

 
Create only one account for each unique Asset or Liability (bank account, providers, customers) on your balance sheets. 

Never create Asset or Liability accounts referring to periods or dates for reporting purposes. This might seem handy at first but over time your chart of accounts will become a mess and reporting becomes very complex.
You solve periodic reporting using search conditions as described in the Search Guide.


For example
Just create one Receivables account and report with Receivables on$y by:m.
Instead of having an Asset Receivables_2019 to report with. You will have the maintenance of creating a new receivable for each year, teach the bookbot again, update and create new reports, but most important you lose your historic insight to your Receivables.

Less accounts, means a little less of control, but a lot to Gain on Productivity! Key is to find the right balance between both!

Books

Less is better! Keep everything in one book per entity or per currency. 

Never create books referring to periods or dates. Just like with accounts this might seem handy at first but as you go your reporting becomes a mess with a lot of overhead in maintenance. You solve periodic reporting using search conditions as described in the Search Guide.

Note: no matter the number of transactions on your book, search speed is not affected, so you do not have to worry about having many transactions in one book.  

Unusual Transactions

Avoid unusual transactions

Avoid transactions where an Income is booked directly to Outgoing.
Normally an Income first passes through an Asset before it is booked to an Outgoing account.

For example
Sales >> Transport 

Should be
Sales >> Bank account
Bank account >> Transport

 

Avoid transactions where an Outgoing is booked directly to an Incoming account.  It is very unlikely that an Expense turns into an Income.


Avoid transactions where an Income is booked directly to Liability.
Normally an Income first passes through an Asset before it is booked to a Liability.

For example
Sales >> Supplier 

Should be
Sales >> Bank account
Bank account >> Provider 


Avoid transactions where a Liability is booked directly to an Income.
It is very unlikely that a Liability turns into an Income.


Transactions where an Asset is booked directly to an Income, happen when you do a refund.

For example
Bank account >> Sales

Transactions where an Outgoing is booked directly to a Liability or Asset happen when you receive a refund.
​ 
For example
Materials >> Supplier
or
Materials >> Bank Account 

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