Running the business

Expenses, payroll & books

What goes out, what staff are owed, and what the accounts say.

Money coming in is the sales side. This is the other half — what goes out, who is owed what, and whether the business is actually making anything.

Expenses

Expenses records what the business spends. Each expense has a category, an amount, a channel it was paid from, and a note.

Categories are yours — create them as you go rather than fitting your business into a fixed list.
Paid from a channel — so spending cash out of the drawer reduces the drawer, not some abstract total.
Can be marked as a debt — something owed but not yet paid, which is a different thing from money gone.

Note Recording which channel an expense came from is what makes close of business work. Cash spent on a delivery has to leave the drawer's expected balance, or the person counting it comes up short through no fault of theirs.

Approval

Expenses can require approval before they count. Whether they do, and who approves, is a capability — so a business that wants a cashier to log spending but not authorise it can have exactly that.

Payroll

Payroll works out what each person is owed for a period, including anything that has to come off.

Component	Where it comes from
Basic pay	The staff record
Commissions	Sales attributed to that person
Deductions	Unresolved cash shortages and deficits
Adjustments	Entered by hand, with a reason

Shortages carry into pay An unresolved cash shortage from close of business appears as a deduction. This is the mechanism that stops a shortage from quietly disappearing — but it means shortages need resolving promptly, while the facts are still fresh, not at the end of the month.

Accounting

Accounting assembles the books from what has already been recorded. It is not a separate ledger you maintain — sales, expenses, payroll and stock movements are the ledger.

Revenue against expenses, by period
Cost of goods sold, from actual item costs
Gross and net margin
What is owed to you, and what you owe

Tip Enter cost prices honestly when you add stock. Margin is worked out from them, and a guessed cost price makes every profit figure downstream a guess too.

Tax

Turn on Taxes in Settings → Features, then configure rates in Settings → Tax. Tax is worked out per line, and shown separately on receipts.

You decide whether prices include tax or have it added. Both are normal depending on where you trade and who you sell to; getting it wrong means either eating the tax or surprising your customers at checkout.

Partners

Partners covers people who sell on your behalf for a cut. A partner sale is processed automatically: the wholesale portion goes to your wallet, the commission to the partner, and the split is shown on the sale.

Note The split is recorded at the time of the sale. Paying a partner out later does not deduct again — the money was already apportioned.

Every page in this area

Page	What it does	Needs
Expenses	Money going out — what was spent, on what, who approved it, and what is still owed.	Expenses · read
Tax	What you owe the tax authority and when. VAT collected on sales, PAYE from salaries, withholding tax — each period shown with its filing deadline, ready to mark as filed and paid.	Tax · read · Taxes switched on
Debts	Who owes this business money and for how long — unpaid sales and staff advances, oldest first, so a total becomes a list of people to call.	Accounting · read
Accounting	The books. Revenue, cost of sales and gross profit, what it all cost to run, and what the business is left with — for any period you choose, with the receivables, payables, cash and stock position beside it.	Accounting · read
Reports	The longer view — revenue against expenses, what sells, who sells it, and how any of it changed over time.	Reports · read