Accounting
Banks & cash
In one line: track your company's money across its cash tills and bank accounts, transfer between them, watch post-dated cheques until they clear, and match your books against the bank statement.
Plan: Part of the Accounting workspace — available from the Advanced plan and during the trial. See the Accounting overview.
Overview
The Banks & cash group is where your company's money lives: every cash till and every bank account you own, each with its live balance. It has three screens:
- Banks & tills — the list of your cash and bank accounts with their balances, and transfers between them.
- Post-dated cheques — track cheques in and out through their lifecycle until they clear or are paid.
- Bank reconciliation — match what your books say against what the bank statement says.
Note: Every balance on these screens is computed from the ledger, not a stored number. Duwam never adds a transaction's amount to a running total; it recomputes from the general ledger each time — so what you see here always matches the trial balance.
Banks & tills
The screen shows a table of your cash and bank accounts: code, account (its name), type, and balance. There are four types:
- Cash on hand — cash in the drawer.
- Bank account — your account at the bank.
- POS cash drawer — the cashier's till.
- Cash in custody — cash held by an employee.
Transferring between accounts
A transfer moves an amount from one of your accounts to another of your own — such as depositing till cash into the bank, or drawing cash from the bank into a till. Fill in From, To, Date, and Amount, then press "Execute transfer"; the balances are re-read from the server afterward, never patched locally.
A transfer is neither a receipt nor a payment: it has no counterparty — both accounts are your company's, and nobody owes anyone. Cash coming in from a customer or going out to a supplier is recorded as a receipt or payment in Sales or Purchases, not here.
Tip: A transfer needs at least two accounts. If you have only one, add another first for the form to appear.
Post-dated cheques
A cheque you receive is not cash. It's a receivable that becomes cash on its due date, and it may bounce before then. So this screen tracks each cheque through its lifecycle instead of counting it in the bank the day it arrives.
The table shows, for each cheque: its number, direction (incoming or outgoing), due date, amount, status, and the available actions. Filter the list by direction: all, incoming, outgoing.
The statuses differ by direction:
- Incoming: held → deposited → cleared, and it may bounce (bounced) or be cancelled.
- Outgoing: issued → paid, or cancelled.
The screen shows only the buttons the server allows for each cheque — you're never offered an action the system would refuse. Press a button to move the cheque to its next state.
Caution: Don't treat an incoming cheque as a balance in your bank before it clears — counting it as cash the day it arrives overstates the bank for weeks, and a bounce then becomes money "leaving" an account it never entered.
Note: Each transition posts its own entry dated when it happened (today), and never edits an earlier one. A bounced cheque restores the original receivable; it doesn't erase the entry that recorded it.
Bank reconciliation
Reconciliation compares three things: what your books say, what the bank said, and what neither has seen yet. Choose the account and an as-of date, then press "Show."
The matching steps:
- Import the statement: paste the statement lines (date, description, amount — one per line) into the "Import statement" box. The server reads the lines, not the browser.
- Match: pick a line from the books column and a matching line from the bank column, then press "Match." To reverse it, press "Unmatch."
- Read what's left: what remains in the two columns is the whole point — a book entry the bank hasn't seen is usually a cheque not yet cleared, and a bank line your books don't have is usually a fee or charge nobody recorded.
When you're done, enter the opening balance and the statement closing balance, then press "Complete reconciliation."
Caution: Completing is a claim that the account balances, and Duwam refuses to complete one that doesn't — there is no field to post the difference. Resolve the gap now; it will never be easier to find than today, and a reconciliation that doesn't balance is inherited by every month after it.
FAQ
Q: Why can't I edit an account's balance directly? A: Because the balance is computed from entries, not stored. It changes when a transaction is recorded (an invoice, a voucher, a transfer), so it always matches the general ledger.
Q: I deposited till cash into the bank — where do I record it? A: As a transfer from the cash account to the bank account on the Banks & tills screen. It's a move between two of your accounts, not a receipt or a payment.
Q: A customer's cheque bounced. What happens? A: Move it to the bounced state; Duwam posts an entry that restores the receivable on the customer as it was, without touching the entry that recorded receiving the cheque.
Q: Why did the system refuse to complete my reconciliation? A: Because your computed balance doesn't match the statement closing balance. Look in the two columns for an unmatched line — a cheque not yet cleared or a fee not recorded — resolve it, then complete again.
Q: Where do the bank statement lines come from? A: You paste them from your bank's statement into the import box, one line per transaction; the server reads them and shows them in the bank column.
Quick reference
| Action | Path |
|---|---|
| Accounts and balances | Accounting workspace → Banks & cash → Banks & tills |
| Transfer between accounts | Banks & tills → "Execute transfer" |
| Post-dated cheques | Accounting workspace → Banks & cash → Post-dated cheques |
| Move a cheque to its next state | Cheques → the available action button |
| Bank reconciliation | Accounting workspace → Banks & cash → Bank reconciliation |
| Import bank statement | Reconciliation → "Import statement" |
| Complete a reconciliation | Reconciliation → "Complete reconciliation" |