Your client has given you the Accountant role on their StoreDeck account. You read every page and figure they read on the stores they gave you, and you change nothing but the Lock date and the accounting codes. This article says what you are reading.
The basis
StoreDeck keeps a seller's books from their orders, on a sales basis: a sale counts on its order date and a refund on its own date, as the sales channel's statement counts them, so a closed month never moves. Goods are a cost when the order that sells them is saved (cost of goods sold), never when they are bought; stock still on the shelf is valued at cost. On a VAT-registered store, from its registration date, every figure leaves the VAT out, the VAT held in the balance kept apart, and each record's rate is read when the books are read (a record's own, zero for goods sent abroad, else its product's, else standard).
The figures
Every figure has one definition, in the glossary, and every money figure opens the working that made it, with the store's numbers. The statement runs:
- Net sales (gross sales less refunds), less selling fees, cost of goods sold and return postage, is gross profit.
- Less investors' share, expenses, postage labels and stock written off, is net profit.
- Net profit is shared between the owner and everyone on a profit share; the first owner keeps the remainder, and what they take out is recorded as drawings.
Separately, net proceeds is what the sales channel has paid or will pay, and its balance is net proceeds less payouts.
What an export holds
The whole store's workbook has a sheet for each part of the books: the Dashboard, orders, listings, expenses, adjustments, payouts, payments, repayments, deliveries, stock movements and counts, the people paid out of it and, on a registered store, the VAT summary. Its figures are live formulas over the rows, so a total can be checked. Year end's workbook holds the year's balances, checklist and statement by month. Each expense carries the tax return line it reports under.
Posting it to your ledger
Export, on Profit and loss or the Dashboard, has For your accountant: for the dates chosen, each month's journals in the import of Xero (manual journals), QuickBooks Online (journal entries) or any other software (a plain journal), and a file of each kind of record (orders, expenses, adjustments, payouts, payments, repayments, drawings and stock movements). Each month has two journals:
- The sales channel's balance: gross sales, refunds, selling fees, return postage and each adjustment category, posted against a clearing account for the balance at the month's net proceeds. The clearing account then holds what the channel holds, and each payout in the bank feed is a transfer out of it.
- Costs: cost of goods sold and stock written off out of stock, each expense out of the card or account that paid it (one not paid by one of your client's own, Paid another way), the channel's fees paid by card or bank among the fees, and investors' share into what is owed to investors. Leave it out if you code these costs from the bank feed already, or they count twice.
Each month's lines add up to the month on Profit and loss, to the penny; what rounding leaves is a Rounding line of a penny or two. On a VAT-registered store the VAT is on lines of its own: what the balance holds on sales less fees, and what the expenses reclaim. QuickBooks Online's import takes no VAT, so its VAT codes are applied after the import; the VAT summary gives HMRC's boxes. A journal imports as a draft in Xero, to review before it is posted.
The accounting codes
Settings, Accounting, holds the account and tax code each line carries, as your software names them: an account code in Xero, an account's name in QuickBooks Online. They start empty. A line left blank takes the code of the line it reports under: an adjustment category its line's, an expense category Other business expenses', a payment method Paid another way's. So a few codes cover a store. On Xero's standard UK chart that is sales 200, cost of goods sold 310, stock 630, VAT 820 and rounding 860, each expense at its 400 code and No VAT as every line's tax code. Xero posts no journal to a bank account, so the balance's clearing account and each payment method take a current asset account with Enable payments to this account ticked, and each payout or card payment in the bank feed is matched against it.
What StoreDeck does not do
- It has no bank feed: payouts and payments are recorded by the seller.
- It keeps no double-entry ledger or trial balance; it is a seller's books, posted to yours by the journals above.
- It files nothing: the VAT summary and Year end are records to prepare a return or accounts from.
The Lock date
Once a period is filed, set the Lock date to its last day (Settings, Lock date), and nothing dated in it can be added, changed or deleted. If your client moves it earlier, you are told.
Related: Working with your accountant, Business and tax, Glossary.
Still need help? Contact support, or look a word up in the glossary.