The main screenالشاشة الرئيسية

When Libra opens you are looking at three things: the ribbon across the top, the menu down the left, and the status bar along the bottom. Everything you do starts in one of them.

1. The Main ribbon

The Main tab is the company-level toolbar it acts on the company as a whole, not on any one screen:

• Create company: the two-step wizard that builds a new company. See How to set up a company.
• Select company: switch to another company. You pick it from a dropdown and click OK.
• Move to another year: open a different financial year. Used when you close the financial year, and whenever you need to work in an earlier year (2023, say) on its own.
• Change login: sign in as a different user without restarting Libra.
• Switch server: choose which server Libra reads its data from. This only matters if your site runs more than one server; most installations never touch it.
• Manage quick list: build the Home group at the top of the left menu. See How to set up the Quick List.
• Restore and Backup: restore a company from a backup, and take one.
• Create ShortCut: put a desktop shortcut that opens straight into this company.
• Workflow: the approval flows, when your license includes them.
• About and Help, on the far right your exact version number, and the help.

2. The left menu

The left menu is a set of groups, and only one group is open at a time - clicking a group header closes the one that was open.

• The Home group at the very top is yours. It is empty until you build it with the Quick List, and a brand-new company starts straight at General ledger with no Home group at all.
• Below it come the fixed groups: General ledger, Accounts receivable, Account payable, Cash/bank management, Fixed assets, Accounts, Cost centers management, Budgeting, Inventory management, Warehouse management, Reports, Inventory reports, and more further down the list.
• The Search box above the groups filters them. Type part of a screen name and the menu collapses to the groups that contain it - handy when you know the name but not the group.

You will not see every group. Which ones appear depends on the modules in your license - a company licensed for accounting only has no inventory or production groups. See Getting started for how the modules fit together.

Click a group to open it and see its screens:

3. Screens open as tabs

Choosing a screen from the menu does not open a new window it opens a tab in the working area, and several tabs can stay open side by side. Only editing dialogs and message boxes are separate windows.

4. The status bar

The bar along the bottom tells you where you actually are. Read it before you report a problem, and read it whenever a figure looks wrong:

• The year (for example 2026): the financial year you are working in.
• Lock date: the date before which nothing can be posted.
• The server (for example .\V22): which server this data is coming from.
• The database (for example accLibra123): which company database you are in. This is the quickest way to check you are not in the wrong company.
• Agent is Running: the background service is alive.
• DB: Connected: Libra is connected to the database.

Next: Old Plan vs New Plan: the one decision to make before you create a company.