Seven reports, and one switch that matters
- Profit and loss, on an accrual or a cash basis, with cost of sales split from overheads
- Cash flow, month by month, with the closing balance carried forward
- Balance sheet — what the business owns, what it owes, what is left
- Aged receivables — who owes you, and how long they have owed it
- Aged payables — who you owe, and how late you are
- Tax summary — tax collected on sales against tax paid on purchases. In India, split by slab with the CGST, SGST and IGST columns, as a working figure for your accountant rather than a filed return. Under US sales tax, what you paid is a cost rather than a credit, so it is shown beside rather than netted off
- Income by client, with a warning when one of them is most of your revenue
Accrual against cash
The same month can be two very different numbers depending on which question you asked, and both answers are correct. Accrual counts the work you did; cash counts what hit the bank. For a business with lumpy revenue the gap between them is often the whole story.
Converted honestly
Every figure converts to your base currency using the rate saved on each document when it was issued. A report never silently re-rates history at today's number.
The reports are checked against each other
The bank line on the balance sheet has to equal the closing balance on the cash flow. Aged payables have to equal the outstanding on your open bills. There is a command that asserts all of it, and it exists because it caught a real bug where the balance sheet counted a bill payment twice — a report that balanced perfectly and was wrong by ₹1,50,000.