Posting and default accountsالترحيل والحسابات الافتراضية

Next to the screens you fill in every day sits a set of account setup screens you visit far less often. General setup gathers eight of them on one page.

1. Where it lives

Open General setup and its own Accounts leaf. The page that opens is a row of tiles, one per rule.

The receipts-and-payments guide already covers the first tile, Payments-receipts - see Receipts, payments and transfers. This page picks up the rest.

2. Posting accounts

A list of accounts by Number, Description, Account description and Currency. An account held in two currencies has one row for each.

Read the list as one row per account per currency rather than one row per account. A purchases account kept in pounds and in dollars takes two rows here, the same number twice with a different Currency beside it, and each row is set up on its own - so a change made against the pound row leaves the dollar row as it was.

Open a row to edit it and one column is worth knowing about before you meet it on an invoice: the Alternative account. It lives on that account's own edit dialog, out along the row of the posting template it belongs to, rather than on the list you just came from - widen the dialog if the column sits off the right edge. An account set up here can carry a stand-in, and Libra uses the stand-in by itself in the cases the setup describes, without asking and without you choosing it on the document.

The consequence shows up at the other end. When the account an item posts to has no alternative set against it, saving the invoice still goes ahead - but Libra puts a confirmation on the screen first, and that message names the account it is about to use. Read it rather than clicking through it: it is telling you exactly which account your setup has left without a stand-in, which is usually a gap worth filling here rather than a reason to stop.

3. Posting template and Transaction template

Two separate tiles, and they open two different screens - worth saying plainly, because their names invite mixing them up.

Posting template already carries five rows: Tourist, Own Invoice, POS, Invoices, Expenses.

Transaction template opens empty, with a single Name column.

4. Default accounts

One screen with five fixed rows - Clients, Supplier, Salesman, Bank and Fixed assets - and four columns: Prefix, Account, Currency and Serial. Edit unlocks it and Save keeps the change. In the company shown, Salesman already reads 4212 - Personnel in LBP, and the other four accounts are empty.

5. The remaining tiles

The rest open empty, ready for the first row your company needs:

• Perpetual inventory - a grid of Account number, Account currency, Inventory Opening, Inventory account and Change account columns, with New, Edit and Delete on its ribbon.
• Charges type - already carries seven rows (Shipping, Handling, Custom, Other charges, Clearance, Commision, Insurance), each with its own Category.
• Difference of exchange accounts - the chart of accounts as a tree, headed Chart entries included in differential exchange, with a tick box on each branch. In this company Payables And Receivables and Current Assets are ticked.

One more screen sits outside this page, as its own leaf next to Accounts in General setup:

• Auto transfer accounts - a grid of Code, PID/Cash box, Cash box, Cash box Currency, Description, PID/Bank, Bank, Bank Currency, Description and Kind.

Type the name of a second one in the navigation pane's Search box to open it:

• Auto generated transaction accounts - a grid of Id, Start date, Account, Account Currency, Description, Latin description, the VAT account columns and Kind, with New, Edit, Delete and Preview on its ribbon.

6. A Payment/Receipt kind, saved

Receipts, payments and transfers already explains what each column of the Payment and receipt screen means. Adding a kind is a New, a Description, a Latin description, and an Account number. Saved here, row 5 reads back exactly what was typed, below the five kinds the company already had: