Understanding Genuka accounting

Why it matters

Accounting is an optional Genuka module: you can sell, manage stock and track expenses without turning it on. Once it is on, it creates the entries for your sales, purchases and payments by itself, and your job is to monitor them, not to type them. This guide explains what that changes and what stays on your side.

Summary

Genuka accounting keeps the company's books using double entry, automatically, from the activity you have already recorded: every sale, purchase, receipt and payment creates its accounting entry with no double entry of data. The module is then used to check, correct and close the books, and to produce the statements an accountant or the tax authority expects.

The core idea: you do not "do" the accounting, you monitor it. What fills it in is your orders, your expenses and your payments.

Where to find it

• Menu › Finances › Accounting: once accounting is set up, this menu expands into Dashboard, Entries, Journals, Fixed assets, Analytical, Reports, Third parties & Reconciliation, Fiscal, Tax, Compliance and Configuration. Before that, the entry opens the setup wizard.
• Settings › Finance groups the same screens as cards (Accounting, Chart of Accounts, Journal Entries, Journals, Third Party Accounts, Reconciliation, Treasury Statements…).
• If the company picked its modules at sign-up and did not turn on accounting, these entries do not appear: turn the module on with the Modules button in Settings.

The vocabulary, in three ideas

The account. A box where you file one kind of value: "Cash", "Customers", "Sales of goods", "Purchases". Each account has a number (411 for customers, 401 for suppliers, 5xx for cash and bank…). The full set of accounts is the chart of accounts.

The entry. One recorded event. It always has at least two lines, and the total of the debits always equals the total of the credits. That is double entry. A sale of 10,000 F paid in cash is written as: Cash +10,000 on the debit side, Sales +10,000 on the credit side. If the two columns do not balance, the entry is refused.

The journal. The binder where entries are filed by type: sales journal, purchase journal, cash journal, bank journal, miscellaneous operations, and the opening journal used to carry over a fiscal year.

How entries appear

Three sources, in order of importance:

1. Automatically, from your activity. A validated customer invoice feeds the sales journal; a supplier expense feeds the purchase journal; a payment received or made feeds the cash or bank journal. This is the normal case and the vast majority of the volume.
2. Manually, for what Genuka does not know about: salaries, one-off depreciation, adjustments, entries your accountant advises. See "Record an accounting entry".
3. By carry-over, once, at the start, by importing the trial balance from your old software as opening balances.

The accounts used by the automation are set in Accounting Settings (Menu › Finances › Accounting › Configuration › Settings), tab Default Accounts: sales account, purchase account, VAT account, customer account, supplier account, treasury accounts. Getting this right at the start saves hundreds of corrections later.

Choose what is booked, flow by flow

Not everything has to reach the books on day one. In Accounting Settings, tab Automatic Entries, each flow (sales, credit notes, purchases, customer receipts, supplier payments, stock movements, inventories, write-offs, treasury, fixed assets) is set independently to one of three positions:

The setting applies to the whole company, and can be overridden per shop or per warehouse: one branch can post its sales while another leaves them as drafts while it gets its data entry reliable.

This is the right tool for a gradual start: put sales in draft, check what that produces, then switch to posted. It does not touch your operations at all: your orders, your stock and your customers' balances work exactly the same whether accounting is on or off.

The life of an entry

An entry is born as a draft: editable, deletable, with no effect on your statements. It becomes posted when you validate it. It then receives a final number, counts in the balance sheet and income statement, and can no longer be edited or deleted.

This rigidity is not a flaw: it is the guarantee that makes your books reliable in an audit. To correct a posted entry, you do not edit it, you reverse it: Genuka creates an opposite entry, dated today, that cancels its effect, and then you enter the correct one. Both stay visible, which is what an auditor expects to see.

Time: fiscal years and periods

Activity is split into fiscal years (usually 12 months), themselves split into periods (most often monthly). An entry is automatically attached to the fiscal year and period matching its date.

An open fiscal year accepts entries; a closed one refuses them. This is why a reversal is always dated today and not on the original date: the original date may belong to a period that is already closed.

What you get out of it

• The balance sheet: what the company owns and what it owes, on a given date.
• The income statement: what it earned and spent over a period; the difference is the profit or loss.
• The cash flow statement: where the money came from and where it went.
• The trial balance: the balance of each account, the accountant's control tool.
• The general ledger: the detail of all entries, account by account.

These five statements can be generated for a fiscal year or for a free period, and exported for your accountant.

Accounting framework

Genuka supports three frameworks: SYSCOHADA (Central and West Africa: Cameroon, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Congo, Chad, Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, Niger, Mali, Guinea…), the French PCG, and the Moroccan PCGE. You choose once, at the start, and it determines the chart of accounts that is generated.

Edge cases & common errors

• "My statements are empty." Accounting probably has not been set up: without a chart of accounts, journals and an open fiscal year, nothing can be recorded. See "Set up accounting".
• "My entry is refused: not balanced." The total of the debits differs from the total of the credits. Check each line; the mistake is almost always an amount typed in the wrong column.
• "I cannot delete this entry." It is posted. That is intended: reverse it.
• "Cannot record on this date." The period or fiscal year concerned is closed.
• "This flow creates no entries." Check its position in Accounting Settings › Automatic Entries: it may be disabled, or in draft, or overridden for that specific shop.
• "The accounting figures do not match my dashboard." This is normal and expected: the dashboard measures commercial revenue according to your settings (revenue type, shop, discounts), while accounting applies accounting rules. Two different questions, two different answers.

FAQ

Do I need to be an accountant to use it? Not for everyday use: sell and spend as usual, and entries create themselves. Yes for closing the fiscal year, tax returns and adjusting entries; that is where your accountant steps in.

Do I have to re-enter everything from my old software? No. You import the closing trial balance as opening balances, and the history already in Genuka can be rebuilt into entries from the setup wizard.

Can I turn on accounting for only part of my business? Yes: each flow is set separately (disabled, draft, posted), and the setting can differ from one shop to another. This is the recommended way to start.

Can I give my accountant access on their own? Yes. Invite them to the team (Settings › Company › Team) and give them a role limited to accounting, created in Settings › Company › Roles & Permissions.

See also

• Set up accounting
• Record an accounting entry
• The chart of accounts
• Generate financial statements
• Fiscal years and accounting periods