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P&L, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, and more.
By Miguel Abascal
• 7 articles

Trial Balance: Your Books' Health Check

What a Trial Balance is A Trial Balance is the simplest possible health check for an accounting system. It does one thing: it adds up every debit in the entire system, adds up every credit, and shows you that they're equal. In double-entry bookkeeping, debits and credits must always be equal. That's the rule. If they're not equal, something is broken: a transaction was saved without both sides, a calculation went wrong, a database glitch corrupted a record. The Trial Balance is how you catch this kind of problem. It's like checking that your cash drawer balances at the end of the shift. You count the cash, compare to what the register says, they should match. If they don't, something's wrong. Every accounting tool since the invention of accounting has this report. BitBooks does too. When to run it - At month-end, before you close the period - After importing data from QuickBooks, CSV, or any bulk source - When numbers look wrong in any other report - Whenever the Insights page shows a red "ledger health" icon - As a final sanity check before sending reports to your accountant or tax preparer It takes about 5 seconds to run. How to run it 1. Click Reports in the left sidebar 2. Click the Trial Balance tab 3. Pick the date range (default: year to date) 4. The report renders Reports page with the Trial Balance tab active, full report visible What you see Every account that has activity in the period appears as a row, grouped by account type: Assets 1010 Cash on Hand $5,200.00 1110 BTC Hot Wallet $9,000.00 1115 BTC Cold Storage $40,000.00 1200 Accounts Receivable $2,500.00 Liabilities 2010 Accounts Payable $1,200.00 2100 Credit Card $ 850.00 Equity 3010 Owner's Capital $25,000.00 3100 Retained Earnings $20,650.00 Income 4010 Sales $15,000.00 Expenses 5010 Cost of Goods Sold $4,500.00 6010 Rent $1,500.00 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── TOTAL $62,700.00 $62,700.00 The two totals at the bottom are the answer. They should be equal. Always. If they're not, something is broken. What "balanced" means The columns are debits (left) and credits (right). In double-entry accounting: - Asset and Expense accounts normally carry debit balances - Liability, Equity, and Income accounts normally carry credit balances - Every transaction adds equal debits and credits somewhere If you sold $1,000 of coffee and the customer paid you in cash: - Cash (Asset, debit) goes up by $1,000 - Sales (Income, credit) goes up by $1,000 Total debits added: $1,000. Total credits added: $1,000. Equal. Across thousands of transactions, the same rule holds. Adding it all up, the totals should always be equal. The Trial Balance is the proof. What if the totals don't match? This should never happen in a working system. Every code path in BitBooks that creates entries enforces the debits = credits rule. If the Trial Balance is off: 1. Don't try to fix the number directly. A "patched" Trial Balance hides the underlying problem. 2. Run the Activity Log report to see what was changed recently. Look for entries created or modified around the time the discrepancy started. 3. Contact support. Imbalanced books are an integrity issue we want to know about. Send the Trial Balance, the date range, and the difference amount. We'll investigate. A small rounding difference (a fraction of a cent) is rare but possible due to currency conversion math. Anything more than that is a real problem. What the Trial Balance does NOT show - Draft entries. Drafts are excluded from all reports, including Trial Balance. Only Posted, Approved, and Reversed entries appear. - Future-dated entries beyond the report's end date. - Archived accounts (unless they had activity in the period). If a Draft has typos or wrong amounts, the Trial Balance won't surface that. It only checks that posted entries are mathematically consistent. Trial Balance vs other reports | Report | What it answers | |---|---| | Trial Balance | Are debits = credits? Are the books internally consistent? | | General Ledger | Every transaction, account by account. The full detail. | | Profit & Loss | Did we make money this period? | | Balance Sheet | What do we own and owe at this moment? | The Trial Balance is the diagnostic tool. The other three are the storytelling tools. You verify with Trial Balance, you communicate with P&L and Balance Sheet. A quick example: catching an import error You imported 600 transactions from a CSV file. Everything looks fine on the Transactions page. You run the Trial Balance. It's off by $847.50. That tells you exactly one thing: somewhere in those 600 transactions, debits don't equal credits. The CSV file likely had a malformed row, or the import skipped a column, or one of the entries lost a side somewhere. Without a Trial Balance, you'd have no way to know. Reports would show wrong numbers and you'd never realize it. With a Trial Balance, you catch it in 5 seconds and can investigate. That's why every bookkeeper runs this report. It's the cheapest insurance there is. A note for non-accountants If "debits and credits" sounds like jargon, here's the everyday-life version: it's a way of double-checking your math. Every transaction has two sides because money has to come from somewhere and go somewhere. If you only record one side, the books are broken. If you record both sides, the books work. The Trial Balance is just the moment where you check that you actually recorded both sides for every transaction. Where to go next - General Ledger for the full detail behind any account - Activity Log to see who recently changed what - Period Close for locking the books once Trial Balance is clean - Balance Sheet to see what your business owns and owes

Last updated on May 03, 2026

Profit & Loss Report (P&L)

What a P&L is The Profit & Loss report (also called Income Statement) answers one question: Did the business make or lose money during this period? It does that by showing income on one side, expenses on the other, and the difference between them at the bottom. If income is bigger, you have a profit. If expenses are bigger, you have a loss. Every business runs a P&L. Monthly, quarterly, annually. It's the single most-shared financial report. How to run it in BitBooks 1. Click Reports in the left sidebar 2. Click Profit & Loss (it's the default report) 3. Pick a date range (default: year to date) The report renders immediately. Reports page on the P&L tab, full report visible with the date selector at the top What the report shows A typical P&L is structured like this: INCOME Sales $45,000.00 Other Income $1,200.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────────── Total Income $46,200.00 COST OF SALES Cost of Goods Sold $18,000.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────────── Total Cost of Sales $18,000.00 GROSS PROFIT $28,200.00 OPERATING EXPENSES Salaries $9,000.00 Rent $3,600.00 Software Subscriptions $1,200.00 Marketing $850.00 General & Administrative $720.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────────── Total Operating Expenses $15,370.00 NET PROFIT $12,830.00 Three layers of "profit" appear: 1. Total Income. All the money you brought in. 2. Gross Profit. Income minus cost of sales (the direct cost of producing what you sold). 3. Net Profit. Gross profit minus operating expenses (rent, salaries, marketing, etc.). The bottom line. What goes where The category an account ends up in is determined by its account type and subtype, set when the account was created in your Chart of Accounts. | What it is | Account type | Where it lands | |---|---|---| | Money customers paid you for products/services | INCOME / SALES | Income | | Money from sources other than your main business | INCOME / OTHER_INCOME | Other Income | | Direct cost of producing what you sold | EXPENSE / COST_OF_SALES | Cost of Sales | | Salaries | EXPENSE / LABOR | Operating Expenses | | Marketing | EXPENSE / SALES_AND_MARKETING | Operating Expenses | | Rent, utilities, software | EXPENSE / GENERAL_AND_ADMINISTRATIVE | Operating Expenses | | One-off expenses outside the normal categories | EXPENSE / OTHER_EXPENSES | Operating Expenses | To change where an account appears, go to Admin → Chart of Accounts, find the account, and update its sub-type. The date range matters a lot A P&L for January looks very different from a P&L for the year. Pick the period that answers your specific question: - Last month: how did we do this past month? - Year to date: how are we doing for the year so far? - Last quarter: investor or board review - Last full year: annual reporting, tax filings - Custom range: any specific window (e.g., for a project that ran March 15 to May 22) The default in BitBooks is year to date. Date range selector at the top of the P&L showing the available presets Comparing periods (this year vs last year) A single P&L is informative. A comparative P&L is more informative because it shows whether you're improving or declining. To compare: 1. On the P&L page, find the Compare dropdown 2. Pick a comparison period (e.g., "Same period last year") 3. The report rerenders with two columns: current period and prior period, plus a "change" column showing the difference P&L with two columns, Q1 2026 and Q1 2025, change column showing percentages This is the standard format investors and bankers expect. Same numbers, in context. Drilling into a number Any number on the P&L is clickable. Click it to see the underlying transactions. For example, click on "Salaries: $9,000.00" and you'll see every transaction posted to the Salaries account during the period: each payment, the date, the contact, the amount. This is sometimes called the "audit trail" or "drill-down." If a P&L number looks wrong, drill into it. The wrong number traces back to a wrong transaction, which you can then fix. Drill-down view showing the transactions behind a Salaries line Multi-currency P&L If your organization has a secondary reporting currency set, the P&L can be displayed in either the functional currency or the reporting currency. Toggle between them at the top of the report. The numbers don't change, just the currency. A profit of CAD$12,830 might display as USD$9,407 in the reporting view (depending on the exchange rate). See The Three-Currency Model Explained for the deeper concept. Exporting Click Export at the top of the P&L to download as PDF or Excel. - PDF. Suitable for sharing with investors, banks, board members. Looks like a printed report. - Excel. Suitable for analysis, putting numbers in a model, or attaching to a tax return. Export menu open on the P&L showing PDF and Excel options What the P&L does NOT show - The cash you have in the bank. That's the Balance Sheet. - Money customers owe you. That's also the Balance Sheet (Accounts Receivable). - The full detail of every transaction. That's the General Ledger. - Draft entries. Drafts are excluded from all reports. - Bitcoin holdings' unrealized value changes. Those appear on the P&L only after you run an FX revaluation. See Tracking Bitcoin Value Changes. A common mistake: looking at a healthy P&L profit and assuming you have cash to spend. The P&L tells you whether you earned a profit. The Balance Sheet tells you whether you have cash. They're not the same. You can be profitable on paper while still being short on cash if customers haven't paid their invoices yet. Run both reports together to get the full picture. Common questions "My profit on the P&L doesn't match the change in my bank balance. Why?" Profit is based on accrual accounting (revenue is recognized when earned, expenses when incurred). Bank balance is just cash. The two diverge when you sell on credit (revenue recorded, no cash yet), buy on credit (expense recorded, no cash yet), or hold inventory. "How do I see only one customer's revenue?" The P&L is by account, not by contact. To see revenue per customer, run the General Ledger and filter by contact, or run a custom Sales by Customer report (Reports → Sales by Customer when available). "Why is my net profit different from net profit minus tax?" The P&L shows pre-tax profit. Tax expense is recorded separately (often as a year-end journal entry). For after-tax profit, look at the P&L for the full year after closing, including tax provisions. Where to go next - Balance Sheet to see what you own and owe at a point in time - General Ledger for the full transaction-level detail - Trial Balance to verify the books are internally consistent - Comparative Reports for year-over-year analysis - Exporting Reports to PDF and Excel

Last updated on May 03, 2026

Balance Sheet

What a Balance Sheet is The Balance Sheet is a snapshot. It shows, at a single moment in time, what your business owns (assets), what it owes (liabilities), and what's left over for the owners (equity). The fundamental rule: Assets = Liabilities + Equity Always. That's why it's called "balance" sheet. The two sides must balance. If you took everything your business owns and sold it, then paid off everything you owe, what's left is the owners' equity. That's your stake in the business. How to run it in BitBooks 1. Click Reports in the left sidebar 2. Click Balance Sheet 3. Pick an "as of" date (default: today) The report renders. Reports page on the Balance Sheet tab, full report visible with the as-of date selector What the report shows A typical Balance Sheet: ASSETS Current Assets Cash on Hand $5,200.00 BTC Hot Wallet $9,000.00 BTC Cold Storage $40,000.00 Accounts Receivable $2,500.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────── Total Current Assets $56,700.00 Fixed Assets Office Equipment $3,000.00 Vehicles $8,000.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────── Total Fixed Assets $11,000.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────── TOTAL ASSETS $67,700.00 LIABILITIES Current Liabilities Accounts Payable $1,200.00 Credit Card $850.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────── Total Current Liabilities $2,050.00 Long-Term Liabilities Equipment Loan $5,000.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────── Total Long-Term Liabilities $5,000.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────── TOTAL LIABILITIES $7,050.00 EQUITY Owner's Capital $25,000.00 Retained Earnings $35,650.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────── TOTAL EQUITY $60,650.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────────── TOTAL LIABILITIES + EQUITY $67,700.00 The two TOTAL rows ($67,700 in this example) must be equal. That's the balance check. If they're not equal, there's a data integrity problem (run the Trial Balance to investigate). The three sections explained Assets (what you own) Anything of value the business has: - Current assets. Things you can convert to cash within a year. Bank accounts, Bitcoin wallets, accounts receivable, inventory. - Fixed assets. Long-term things. Computers, vehicles, equipment, real estate. - Other assets. Less common categories: prepaid expenses, deposits, intangibles. For a Bitcoin business, both your fiat bank accounts AND your BTC wallets show up here. They're both assets. The BTC value displayed is the dollar (or functional currency) equivalent at the as-of date. Liabilities (what you owe) Anything the business owes to others: - Current liabilities. Due within a year. Accounts payable (vendor bills), credit cards, short-term loans, taxes owed. - Long-term liabilities. Due more than a year out. Equipment loans, mortgages, long-term debt. Equity (what's left for the owners) The difference between assets and liabilities. This is the owners' stake. Equity has two main pieces: - Owner's capital (or "paid-in capital"). Money the owners put into the business at startup or in subsequent investment rounds. - Retained earnings. All the profit the business has made minus any owner draws or dividends. The accumulated history of profits. If your business made $35,000 in profit since founding, kept all of it in the business, and the owners originally put in $25,000, equity is $60,000. That's their stake. The "as of" date matters A Balance Sheet shows what you own and owe at one specific moment. Pick that moment carefully: - Today. What does the business look like right now? - End of last month. Where did we stand at month-end? - End of last year. Year-end Balance Sheet for tax filings or annual reports. - A specific historical date. Maybe an investor wants to see Balance Sheet on the day they invested. Change the as-of date at the top of the report. As-of date selector at top of Balance Sheet Comparing two dates (start vs end of period) To see how the Balance Sheet changed during a period: 1. On the Balance Sheet page, find the Compare dropdown 2. Pick a comparison date 3. The report shows two columns and a change column This is how investors and lenders read your Balance Sheet. They want to see whether it's improving (more assets, less debt, more equity) or declining. Comparative Balance Sheet showing Dec 31 2026 vs Dec 31 2025 plus a change column Drilling into a number Same as the P&L. Click any number on the Balance Sheet to see the transactions behind it. Click on "BTC Hot Wallet: $9,000.00" and you'll see every transaction in that wallet up to the as-of date. Useful when a number looks wrong. Bitcoin on the Balance Sheet If you hold Bitcoin, it appears under Assets. The value shown is the BTC balance times the exchange rate at the as-of date. Important: the rate is the rate at the as-of date, not the rate when you acquired the BTC. So if you bought BTC at $50,000 each and the price is now $80,000, your Balance Sheet reflects the $80,000 value, not the $50,000 cost. The difference between cost and market value is an unrealized gain (or loss). For accurate accounting, you should periodically run an FX revaluation to formally book those changes. See Tracking Bitcoin Value Changes. Without revaluations, your Balance Sheet still shows current market value, but the offsetting entry isn't formally journalized. Most small Bitcoin businesses run revaluations at year-end. Larger or audited businesses run them monthly or quarterly. What the Balance Sheet does NOT show - Whether you made money this period. That's the P&L. - The history of changes. Balance Sheet is a snapshot, not a movie. To see how things changed, run two Balance Sheets at different dates and compare, or look at the Cash Flow Statement. - Draft entries. Drafts are excluded. Common questions "Why is my equity so high?" Equity grows whenever the business makes a profit and the owners don't take it out. If you've been profitable for years and haven't paid yourself dividends, equity will be a big number. That's a good thing: it means the business has built up value. "My Balance Sheet doesn't balance." This should never happen. If it does, run the Trial Balance to confirm debits = credits. If Trial Balance is fine but Balance Sheet is off, contact support. There's a data integrity issue we need to investigate. "What's 'Net Income' doing on the Balance Sheet?" You might see a "Net Income" or "Current Year Earnings" line in the Equity section. That's the profit from the current period (year-to-date), which hasn't yet been rolled into Retained Earnings. At year-end close, this number gets transferred to Retained Earnings and resets to zero for the new year. Where to go next - Profit & Loss Report for the period view of revenue and expenses - Cash Flow Statement for how cash moved during the period - Tracking Bitcoin Value Changes for proper Bitcoin revaluation accounting - Period Close for year-end procedures

Last updated on May 03, 2026

General Ledger

What the General Ledger is The General Ledger (GL) is the most detailed report in BitBooks. It shows every transaction, in every account, for whatever period you pick. Where the P&L summarizes ("you had $45,000 in Sales this period"), the GL details ("here's every single transaction that contributed to that $45,000, with amounts, dates, contacts, and memos"). It's the report accountants run first when they want to understand what happened. It's also the report you run when something on the P&L looks wrong. How to run it 1. Click Reports in the left sidebar 2. Click General Ledger tab 3. Pick a date range 4. The report renders Reports page on the General Ledger tab showing accounts grouped with their transactions What the report shows The GL is organized by account. For each account that had activity in the period: - Account name and code (e.g., 4010 Sales) - Beginning balance (what was in this account at the start of the period) - Every transaction in the account during the period: date, contact, memo, debit amount, credit amount, running balance - Ending balance (what's in the account at the end of the period) Like this: 4010 SALES Beginning balance: $0.00 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Date Memo Contact Debit Credit Balance ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 2026-01-03 morning sale Cash Customer $25.00 $25.00 2026-01-03 Lightning sale 5k sats Cash Customer $40.00 $65.00 2026-01-04 refund Cash Customer $5.00 $60.00 ... ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Ending balance: $45,000.00 Run for a year and you might have 1,000 lines. The GL doesn't care. Filtering and drilling The GL supports filters at the top: - Date range. Period to display. - Account. Show one specific account, or all. - Contact. Show only transactions involving a specific contact. - Direction. Money in only, money out only, or both. The most common use is filtering to a single account when you want to investigate it. GL filtered to a single account showing the focused detail view The "Detail" mode When you click on a single account from the main GL view, the page switches to GL Detail. This is the deep-dive: only one account, full transaction list, with all the metadata visible. Useful when: - You're investigating a single number (P&L said $9,000 in Salaries, you want to see what 9,000 came from) - An auditor wants account-level detail - You're reconciling at the account level The GL Detail view supports the same filters: date range, contact, direction. Drilling from another report Most reports support drill-down to the GL: - Click a number on the P&L → opens the GL Detail for that account - Click a wallet balance on the Insights page → opens the wallet's transaction history (basically GL Detail for the wallet's account) - Click a row on the Trial Balance → opens GL Detail for that account The GL is the "back end" the other reports build on. Anywhere you see a summary number, you can drill into the GL detail. What's NOT in the GL - Drafts. Excluded from all reports. Only Posted, Approved, and Reversed entries. - Off-book information. Memos, attachments, audit log entries are linked but not shown directly. - Future-dated entries beyond the report's end date. For a full audit including draft activity and metadata, use the Activity Log report instead. Multi-currency in the GL If your organization uses multiple currencies, the GL shows transactions in their functional currency by default. Each line displays the functional value (USD, CAD, etc.). To see the original transactional currency, click into the line. The detail shows transactional amount, currency, exchange rate, and the calculated functional value. If you have a reporting currency set, you can toggle the GL to display in reporting currency. The numbers translate using the report's end-date rate. Export Click Export at the top of the GL to download as PDF or Excel. PDF: read-only, suitable for handing to an accountant. Excel: editable, suitable for further analysis. Each transaction is a row with separate columns for date, account, debit, credit, contact, memo. Easy to filter, pivot, sum. For a full year's GL, the Excel export can be 10,000+ rows. Excel handles that fine. It'll be a few-second download. A worked example Your P&L for March shows $9,500 in "Software Subscriptions" expense. You don't remember spending that much. You want to see what's in there. 1. Click on the $9,500 number on the P&L. The page navigates to GL Detail for Software Subscriptions, March. 2. You see the list: - $200 Slack - $400 GitHub Team - $1,500 AWS hosting - $7,400 (highlighted in red because it's unusually large), payment to "Adobe" memo "annual subscription" 3. You investigate the $7,400. It's an annual Adobe Creative Cloud renewal. Yes, that's real. The P&L number was right; you just needed the GL Detail to see what made it up. GL vs Trial Balance vs Activity Log | Report | Purpose | |---|---| | General Ledger | Every transaction, organized by account | | Trial Balance | Account ending balances (debit and credit columns), plus the math check that they're equal | | Activity Log | Every action ever taken, organized by user/entity, including reversals and edits | You'd use: - GL to investigate specific numbers - Trial Balance as a quick health check - Activity Log to see who changed what and when They draw from the same underlying data; they organize it differently. Common questions "Can I save filters as a saved view?" Not in the current UI. Each time you load the GL, set the filters fresh. Saved views are on the roadmap. "How far back can I run the GL?" As far back as your organization's data goes. If you've been in BitBooks for 3 years, you can run the GL across all 3 years. Performance scales: a 3-year GL with 50,000 transactions might take 10-20 seconds to render. "Why is my account's beginning balance different from the prior month's ending balance?" It shouldn't be. If they differ, run the Trial Balance to check internal consistency. If Trial Balance is fine but GL beginning ≠ prior ending, contact support; that's a bug. Where to go next - Profit & Loss Report for revenue and expense summaries - Balance Sheet for asset/liability/equity balances - Trial Balance for the books-health-check - Activity Log for who-did-what-when - Exporting Reports to PDF and Excel for getting reports off the screen

Last updated on May 03, 2026

Cash Flow Statement

What a Cash Flow Statement is The Cash Flow Statement (CF) shows where actual cash came in and where it went out during a period. It complements the P&L (which shows profit on an accrual basis) and the Balance Sheet (which shows balances at a point in time). The simple question it answers: how much cash did the business generate or consume? A profitable business can run out of cash if customers pay slowly or if it's funding inventory. A money-losing business can have plenty of cash if it's drawing down savings. The Cash Flow Statement is what tells you which scenario you're in. How to run it 1. Click Reports in the left sidebar 2. Click Cash Flow tab 3. Pick a date range 4. The report renders Reports page on the Cash Flow tab showing the three-section layout The three sections A standard Cash Flow Statement has three sections, in this order: Operating activities Cash from running the business: collecting from customers, paying vendors, paying salaries, paying rent. A typical line list: Net Profit (from P&L) $12,830 + Depreciation (non-cash) $1,000 + Increase in Accounts Payable $2,000 - Increase in Accounts Receivable ($3,500) - Increase in Inventory ($1,200) ───────────────────────────────────── Net Cash from Operations $11,130 Operating cash is the most important number. If it's negative, your business is consuming cash from operations and you need other sources (investment, financing) to keep going. Investing activities Cash spent or received from investments: buying or selling fixed assets, acquiring or selling Bitcoin as a treasury reserve, buying long-term securities. Purchase of Office Equipment ($3,000) Purchase of Bitcoin (treasury) ($50,000) ───────────────────────────────────── Net Cash from Investing ($53,000) For most small businesses, this section is small. For Bitcoin treasuries, the Bitcoin acquisition flows here. Financing activities Cash from owners or lenders: capital contributions, loan proceeds, dividends paid, loan repayments. Owner Contribution $25,000 Loan Repayment ($1,500) ───────────────────────────────────── Net Cash from Financing $23,500 For startups, this section captures investor and founder funding. The total Net Cash from Operations $11,130 Net Cash from Investing ($53,000) Net Cash from Financing $23,500 ───────────────────────────────────── Net Change in Cash ($18,370) + Cash at Beginning of Period $80,000 ───────────────────────────────────── Cash at End of Period $61,630 The "Cash at End of Period" should match the actual cash on hand from the Balance Sheet. If it doesn't, something is broken. Direct vs Indirect method There are two ways to compute the Operating section: Direct method List actual cash receipts and disbursements: cash collected from customers, cash paid to suppliers, cash paid to employees. Pros: easy to read, intuitive. Cons: data-heavy, requires tagging every transaction by cash impact. Indirect method Start with Net Profit from the P&L, adjust for non-cash items (depreciation, amortization, FX gains/losses) and changes in working capital (receivables, payables, inventory). Pros: derives from existing P&L and Balance Sheet, less data work. Cons: less intuitive for non-accountants. BitBooks uses the indirect method by default. Most accounting tools do; it's the standard. Why the indirect method makes sense For a small business, you've already calculated Net Profit. The Cash Flow Statement piggybacks on it: take Net Profit, undo the parts that didn't actually involve cash (like depreciation), and adjust for the timing differences between when revenue/expenses are recognized and when cash actually moves. The mechanics: - Add back depreciation: depreciation is an expense on the P&L but no cash actually left - Adjust for AR changes: if AR went up, customers haven't paid yet, so cash didn't come in - Adjust for AP changes: if AP went up, vendors haven't been paid yet, so cash didn't go out - Adjust for inventory: inventory bought is cash out; inventory sold is part of COGS The result is a cash-only view of operations. Bitcoin businesses and the Cash Flow Statement For Bitcoin businesses, "cash" usually means functional currency cash plus settled, non-volatile holdings. Bitcoin treasury holdings are typically classified as Investing activities (a long-term asset, not operating cash). So: - Selling Bitcoin: cash inflow from Investing - Buying Bitcoin (as treasury): cash outflow from Investing - Operating Bitcoin (Lightning sales for goods/services): part of Operating This split matters because operating cash is what tells you if your business is sustainable. Treasury moves are separate. If your business is itself a Bitcoin treasury (your "operations" ARE the Bitcoin holdings), the classifications shift. Talk to your accountant. Common questions "My P&L shows a profit but my Cash Flow shows a loss in operations. How?" Most common reasons: - Customers haven't paid yet (AR went up) - You paid for inventory or supplies you haven't sold yet - A big depreciation expense reduced profit but didn't cost cash Profit and operating cash diverge in normal businesses. The CF is what surfaces the gap. "My ending cash on the CF doesn't match my Balance Sheet." Should match. If it doesn't, run the Trial Balance first to confirm internal consistency. If TB is balanced but CF doesn't tie, contact support. "Do I need a Cash Flow Statement for a small business?" Not strictly required, but extremely useful. Lenders, investors, and accountants always ask for it. Even just glancing at it once per quarter is informative. Where to go next - Profit & Loss Report for the income statement - Balance Sheet for the snapshot of assets/liabilities/equity - General Ledger for transaction-level detail - Trial Balance for verifying the books are internally consistent - Tracking Bitcoin Value Changes for how revaluations affect the Cash Flow

Last updated on May 03, 2026

Activity Log: Who Changed What

What the Activity Log shows Every meaningful action in your organization is logged. The Activity Log is the searchable, filterable view of that history. You'll find: - Who did the action (user) - When they did it (timestamp) - What they did (created, updated, deleted, posted, reversed, approved, archived) - Which entity was affected (the specific transaction, journal entry, wallet, account, contact, or organization setting) - What changed (the before-and-after values, where applicable) For accountability, audit, debugging, this is the source of truth. How to open it 1. Click Reports in the left sidebar 2. Click Activity Log tab Reports page on the Activity Log tab showing a list of recent activities You can also jump there from the Insights page (the activity link in the header) or from a specific entity (every entity's detail page has an "View activity" link that pre-filters). What appears in the log The actions tracked: | Action | When it fires | |---|---| | CREATE | A new entity is created (transaction, journal entry, wallet, account, contact) | | UPDATE | An entity's fields are changed | | DELETE | An entity is deleted (rare, only Drafts) | | POST | A Draft becomes Posted | | APPROVE | A Pending entry is approved | | REVERSE | A Posted entry is reversed | | ARCHIVE | An entity is soft-deleted (e.g., archiving a wallet or account) | Plus organization-level events: - Settings changes (currency, lock date, etc.) - User invitations and removals - Role changes Each row shows 2026-04-15 14:23 Brandon Janis UPDATE Transaction TX-001245 changed: amount $1,000 -> $1,500 Click the row to see more detail: the full diff (before/after for every changed field), the user's IP address (if available), the related entities, and a link to the affected entity. Filtering The Activity Log supports filters: - Date range. Default last 30 days. Adjustable to any range. - User. Filter to actions by one specific user. - Action type. Show only CREATEs, only UPDATEs, etc. - Entity type. Show only transactions, only journal entries, only wallets, etc. - Specific entity. Show only the activity for one specific transaction or wallet. Combine to drill in. "Show me everything Brandon did to journal entries last week" is a few clicks. Activity Log with filter bar set to user=Brandon, entity type=Journal Entry, last week Common uses Investigating a wrong number Run the Trial Balance. It's off by $500. You suspect someone edited a Posted entry recently. Open the Activity Log, filter to: action = UPDATE, last 7 days, entity type = Journal Entry. The recent updates show up. Each one shows what was changed. Spot the $500 change and you've found the cause. Auditing a team member's work Your bookkeeper just finished their first week. You want to spot-check. Open the Activity Log, filter to: user = the bookkeeper, last 7 days. Skim through the actions. Are they creating reasonable transactions? Categorizing correctly? Anything that looks off? This isn't surveillance; it's normal supervisor practice for new staff. Understanding how a wrong entry happened A specific transaction has been Reversed and re-posted. You want to know why. Find the transaction. Click "View activity." See: - Who created the original - Who posted it - Who reversed it (with the reason in the memo, if they wrote one) - Who created the corrected entry The full lifecycle. Compliance review Annually, an external auditor or accountant reviews your books. They'll often want the Activity Log for the year, exported, as evidence of the audit trail. Run for the year, export to PDF or Excel, hand over. What's NOT in the Activity Log - Read actions. Just viewing a report or browsing transactions doesn't generate log entries. Only changes are logged. - Notifications. The Notifications bell shows recent activity in a curated way, but the Activity Log is the comprehensive record. - Detail of every Draft change. Drafts can be edited freely without each edit hitting the log; Drafts are work-in-progress. Once Posted, all subsequent changes are logged. For Draft-stage tracking, you'd need to look at the Draft's current state, not its history. Retention Activity Log entries are kept indefinitely. They're part of your books' permanent record. If your organization has years of activity, the log can be large (50,000+ entries for a busy multi-year business). The UI paginates; filters keep it manageable. Common questions "Can I delete entries from the Activity Log?" No. The whole point is that it's a permanent record. Deletion would defeat the purpose. "Can I export the Activity Log?" Yes. Click Export at the top. Choose PDF or Excel. The export includes whatever filters you have applied. "Does the Activity Log show changes to settings (like the Lock Date)?" Yes. Organization settings changes (currency, lock date, BTC display preference) all generate log entries. "Who can see the Activity Log?" Owners and Admins by default. Accountants typically also have access. Members and Viewers depend on org configuration. See User Roles. "Can I see who logged in and when?" Sign-in events aren't in the Activity Log (which is about data changes). For login audit, talk to support; we have separate audit data on the back end available on request. Where to go next - Notifications, Ledger Health, Activity Log for the dashboard widget version - General Ledger for transaction-by-transaction account detail - User Roles for who can see what - Period Close for how locking interacts with the audit trail

Last updated on May 03, 2026

Exporting Reports to PDF and Excel

When you'd export Reports inside BitBooks are useful, but most stakeholders want a file: - Your accountant wants a P&L Excel for analysis or tax prep - Your investors want a PDF Balance Sheet for their records - Your bank wants 3 years of financial statements as PDFs for a loan application - Your board wants a polished PDF deck of the quarter's reports - You want to archive reports outside the live system Every report in BitBooks supports export. How to export On any report page (P&L, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, General Ledger, Cash Flow, Activity Log): 1. Set the date range and any filters you want 2. Click Export at the top 3. Pick PDF or Excel 4. The file downloads to your computer Report toolbar with the Export menu open showing PDF and Excel options The export uses whatever you currently see on screen. If you've applied filters or toggled to a different currency view, the export reflects that. PDF format PDFs are formatted for reading and printing: - BitBooks branding at the top (your organization name, the report name, the period) - Clean tabular layout - Page breaks at logical sections - Color-coded for clarity (e.g., debits blue, credits orange) - Footer with the export date and the user who exported Use PDF for: - Sharing with people who don't need to manipulate the data (investors, banks, the board) - Long-term archives - Printing Most reports are 2-10 pages depending on the period. The General Ledger for a full year can be 100+ pages. Excel format Excel files (.xlsx) are formatted for analysis: - Each report section is a separate sheet - Headers are formatted as headers (frozen pane, bold) - Numbers are stored as numbers (not text), so you can sum, pivot, formulate - Formulas (where applicable) are preserved for verification - Account codes and names are separate columns for sorting Use Excel for: - Sharing with your accountant who wants to analyze - Building a budget vs actuals tracker - Pivot table analysis - Re-formatting for an internal template The General Ledger Excel is especially useful: every transaction is a row with separate columns. You can filter and pivot like a database. What gets included Each report includes the same content as on screen: - P&L: revenue, expenses, gross/net profit, with comparison columns if you set them - Balance Sheet: assets, liabilities, equity, with as-of date - Trial Balance: all accounts with their debit/credit balances - General Ledger: every transaction in every account - Cash Flow: the three sections plus summary - Activity Log: every action with user, timestamp, action, entity, diff If you applied a date filter, the export covers that date range. If you toggled currency, the export uses that currency. Branding and customization Today, exports use a standard BitBooks template (your organization name, the report name, the date). Custom branding (your logo, your color scheme, your footer text) is on the roadmap. For now, if you need custom-branded reports, the workflow is: export to Excel, paste into your branded template, save as PDF. A few extra minutes per report. Multi-currency exports If your organization has a reporting currency, exports can be in either functional or reporting currency. To export in reporting currency: toggle the report to reporting currency view, then Export. The exported file uses the currency you saw. Same for functional currency. If you want both: export each separately. File sizes Typical sizes: - P&L PDF for one month: ~50 KB - Balance Sheet PDF: ~50 KB - Trial Balance PDF: ~100 KB - General Ledger PDF for a quarter: ~500 KB to 5 MB - General Ledger Excel for a year: ~1-10 MB - Activity Log Excel for a year: ~5-20 MB depending on activity volume Most files email-attach fine. Very large GL exports might need a file-share link. Performance For most reports, export is near-instant (a few seconds). For very large exports (multi-year GL with thousands of transactions), it can take 10-30 seconds. The page shows a progress indicator. If an export hangs for more than a minute, that's an issue worth reporting to support. Common questions "Can I email a report directly from BitBooks?" Not yet. Today: export, attach to your email yourself. In-app email-a-report is on the roadmap. "Can I schedule recurring exports (e.g., monthly P&L emailed automatically)?" Not yet. Roadmap. "Can I export to Google Sheets?" Not directly. Excel files import into Google Sheets cleanly: download Excel, then upload to Drive and convert. "Can I export multiple reports at once (a 'monthly close package')?" Not yet as one bundle. Today: export each report separately. Roadmap. "Why is my exported PDF different from what I see on screen?" It shouldn't be. Check that the date range and filters match. If they're identical and the export still differs, that's a bug worth reporting. Where to go next - Profit & Loss Report - Balance Sheet - Trial Balance - General Ledger - Cash Flow Statement - Activity Log

Last updated on May 03, 2026