How Transactions Affect the Ledger

Follow one busy Tuesday through the books. Every event below happens in normal operation — nobody opens an accounting screen all day — yet each one lands in the ledger.

Morning: a delivery from the supplier#

Flour and cheese arrive with an invoice. Recording the purchase raises inventory (an asset) and raises the supplier's payable (what you owe). No cash has moved yet — and the ledger says exactly that.

All day: sales#

Every completed order posts revenue (by the order's income mapping) and tax collected (a liability — that part of the bill was never yours). The payment posts where the money physically went: cash into the register's custody, card into the bank or its clearing account. A credit sale posts a receivable against the customer instead of a payment.

A voided order and a discount#

A cancelled order removes its revenue; the void remains countable in reports. A discount reduces revenue, attributed so discount reporting can say who gave how much.

Evening: register close#

The drawer is counted. The counted cash becomes the cashier's custody balance — company money in a named person's hands — until it is deposited or handed over. Over/short differences are visible, not absorbed.

Night: the day close#

The day close posts consumption: the day's sales exploded through recipes into ingredient usage, valued by your costing method. This is the cost-of-goods side of the day — inventory (asset) down, food cost (expense) up. Bank settlement sweeps move cleared card money from clearing to the bank.

The picture at midnight#

Without a single manual entry, the ledger now shows: what you sold, what it cost in ingredients, who holds the cash, what the processors owe you, what you owe the supplier, and what the customer on credit owes you. The reports are just views over this — which is why they're always current.

Where manual entries fit: rent, utilities, salaries, owner drawings, and corrections. That's the short list. If you find yourself manually entering something the operation should have posted, tell support — that's a mapping to fix, not a habit to form.