Accounting

General ledger

Overview

The general ledger is where every financial movement in your company comes together. Everything the other groups do — a sales invoice, a purchase bill, a bank deposit, a sale at the till — ends up here as a balanced journal entry: an entry whose debit side (what came into an account) equals its credit side (what left it). That is what double-entry means, and it's what keeps the trial balance always in balance and the financial statements derived from the entries rather than typed in by hand.

This group gathers the screens that build and read that ledger directly: you create the chart of accounts, record manual journal entries, migrate your opening balances, attribute figures to cost centres and branches, and manage fixed assets, budgets, and employee custody.

Chart of accounts

The chart of accounts is the tree of accounts every entry posts to — cash, banks, receivables, revenue, expenses… each with a code, a name, and a type. The five types are assets, liabilities, equity, revenue, and expenses.

You don't build the tree by hand; Duwam builds it from just two questions — the rest is known from your company profile:

1. From the general-ledger group, open "Chart of accounts."
2. Choose your business activity (general, services & professions, contracting, or retail).
3. Set "Do you hold inventory?"
4. Press "Create chart of accounts."

You can re-run setup later safely — it adds accounts and deletes nothing. Some accounts carry a badge that explains their role:

• "Contra" — an account that reduces the group it sits in (like an allowance for doubtful debts: filed under assets but money you don't expect to collect).
• "Default" — when more than one account plays the same role (two banks, or two tills), this is the one automatic postings pick. The badge shows only when a role has more than one account.

Fiscal year: No entry is accepted outside an open fiscal year. The company admin opens the year from this screen with "Open fiscal year." Open the year before entering opening balances dated to a prior year.

Manual journal entry

The manual journal entry is the one screen here that writes to the ledger directly. Use it to record a transaction that doesn't flow through a ready-made screen — invoices and point-of-sale post their own entries automatically.

1. Open "Journal entry," set the date, and write the memo (a short description of the transaction).
2. For each line, choose the account, then enter the amount in either the debit or the credit box — not both.
3. Add lines with "Add line" (at least two are needed: a debit and a credit).
4. Watch the totals row under the form: total debit, total credit, and the difference. The entry is balanced when the two totals match and the difference reaches zero.
5. Press "Post entry."

Opening balances

Opening balances carry your current position into the books on the day you start using the system. You enter them in three groups:

• Open sales invoices — what customers owe you, each invoice on its own with its original number and due date, so receivable ages stay correct.
• Open purchase invoices — what you owe suppliers, the same way.
• Balances without a document — cash, bank, inventory, fixed assets, and any balance with no open document behind it; you pick its account, side (debit or credit), and amount.

The entries are dated to the migration date you set, while each document keeps its own original date and due date.

After the migration, a migration residue appears, and its key figure is the amount left in the opening-balance account. It's meant to be zero — then the migration is balanced and nothing was lost. Anything else is the migration's own error, stated as an amount; close it to capital or retained earnings with a manual entry once the migration is complete.

Cost centres and branches

A cost centre or a branch is a part of your business that a journal line is attributed to, so you can later see how much each branch or department spent. They're two flavours of the same thing (technically an analytical dimension): a cost centre or a branch.

1. From "Cost centres and branches," define a new one: choose the type, a code, and the name in Arabic and English, then save.
2. You can archive any that has closed, or reactivate it.
3. To see what each one carries, choose a from / to window and press "Show balances" — each centre's debit, credit, and net appears.

Fixed assets

A fixed asset is something you own and use for a long time — a vehicle, a device, furniture — that loses value gradually through what's called depreciation. This section keeps a register of your assets and computes their depreciation.

1. From "Fixed assets," register an asset: its number, name, cost, salvage value (what you expect to sell it for at the end of its life), life in months, and depreciation method — straight line (an equal amount each month) or reducing balance (a percentage of the remaining value). Also set when depreciation starts: from the month of acquisition or from the next month.
2. Each month, open "Run monthly depreciation," pick the month, and press "Show what will post" to see the total and the assets covered before posting.
3. Review the preview, then press "Post the charge."

Accumulated depreciation and net book value are computed from the entries, not from a stored balance. Click any asset to see its full depreciation schedule. To sell or scrap an asset, use "Dispose."

Budgets

A budget is a spending-and-revenue plan, not a posting: it doesn't touch the books and doesn't appear in the trial balance. Its point is to compare what you planned against what actually happened.

1. From "Budgets," create a new budget: its year and name.
2. Open it to reveal a grid: one row per account, one column for each of the twelve months. Only result accounts (revenue and expenses) are offered.
3. Enter amounts in the account's natural direction (100 on revenue = a hundred of income, 100 on an expense = a hundred of spend; negatives are allowed for planned returns), then save.
4. To see performance, choose a from / to window and press "Show variance."

The variance report shows, per account: planned, actual, and gap, plus a reading column that says "favourable" or "against." The direction isn't the arithmetic sign: spending under budget is favourable, while revenue under budget is against — the system decides this, not a calculation in the browser.

Employee custody

Custody is company property held by an employee — a laptop, a phone, a tool. This section keeps a record of who holds what, and when it was handed over and returned.

1. Define your items first under "New item": code, name, serial number, and category.
2. To hand over or take back an item, open "Hand over or return," set the direction (hand-over/return), the item, the employee, the quantity, and the date, then "Record the movement."
3. The outstanding custody table at the top shows who holds each item right now. The "Return" button beside a row pre-fills the return form (it doesn't submit on its own — confirming a return is a real physical event a person has to verify).
4. Press "Item history" to see its hand-over and return timeline, or "Archive" for an item no longer in use.

FAQ

Q: What's the difference between debit and credit? A: Every entry has two sides: debit is recorded on one side of the account and credit on the other; their totals must match (a balanced entry). In a manual entry each line is either a debit or a credit, and the totals row shows the difference at once.

Q: The system refused my entry as "unbalanced." A: Total debit doesn't equal total credit. Look at the difference box under the form and correct the amounts until it reaches zero.

Q: Why is my entry refused over the fiscal year? A: The entry's date is outside an open fiscal year. The company admin opens the year from "Chart of accounts" → "Open fiscal year," then you retry.

Q: An amount is left in the opening-balance account. A: That's the migration's own difference. Close it to capital or retained earnings with a manual entry once the migration is complete, so it returns to zero.

Q: Do custody hand-overs or depreciation runs need accounting input from me? A: Custody creates no entry at all. Depreciation posts its entry automatically when you run it — all you do is pick the month and review the preview.

Quick reference