VT Cash Book

When you enter a payment or receipt, you have to select two different types of account:

1.The bank or cash account

2.One or more analysis accounts

The analysis account you select determines how income or expenditure is shown in the Profit and loss account report (Display menu). To a certain extent this is a matter of preference. Typically, sales are analysed to accounts in the Income ledger and costs to accounts in the Expenses ledger.

Split Analysis

Transactions can be entered with a split analysis. For instance, payment to a hotel for an event in which you market your business and stay at the hotel can be partially analysed both to Expenses: Advertising costs and Expenses: Car, van and travel expenses. To enter a split analysis, enter an amount other than the balance of the transaction in the last used row in the analysis amount column. An extra row is then automatically created. This can be done any number of times to create any number of analysis entries. Negative analysis amounts can also be entered and this is sometimes useful when entering unusual transactions.

Screenshot of a section of the Payments And Receipts dialog showing a split analysis

Selecting accounts

You can quickly select an analysis ledger by typing the first few characters of the ledger name in the analysis ledger column. Pressing the tab key then moves the cursor to the analysis account column. Similarly, an account can quickly be selected by typing the first few characters of its name. Alternatively, you can click on a ledger or account in the list that is displayed when the cursor is in the column. Next to the accounts list there are also buttons for creating a new analysis account and for displaying the entries in the currently selected account.

AutoComplete

When you enter a payment, an analysis account is automatically suggested if the Paid to/Received from details that have been entered match a previous transaction.

Changing an analysis entry

An analysis entry of a saved transaction can be changed at any time by clicking on the transaction in any report and choosing the Edit Transaction command from the pop-up menu. To change an entry, select it in the list on the Entries tab of the Edit Transaction dialog.

Examples of recording income and expenses

Note: The analysis ledgers and accounts below are from the self-employment chart of accounts. Other chart of accounts in VT will have similar but slightly different names for some accounts.