Overview

StudioCloud provides basic bookkeeping framework to allow businesses the ability to monitor their income and expense over time. By closely tracking a businesses inflows and outflows, business owners can better direct their finances and maximize their businesses profitability.

Account Overview

The Account Overview is designed to give an overview of a businesses accounts such as bank accounts and credit card accounts.

1. Click on the Bookkeeping component
2. Click on the Accounts tab
3. Click on the Accounts menu option

Account Details

The account details tab provides a breakdown of income and expenses for each account.

1. Click on the Bookkeeping component
2. Click on the Accounts tab
3. Click on the Account Details menu option

How to Create/Edit a Bookkeeping Account

1. Go to the Account Overview
1. Click on the Bookkeeping component
2. Click on the Accounts tab
3. Click the Accounts menu button
2. Click the New Account button
   
1. Enter the name for the bank account
2. Select the bookkeeping account Type
1. Bank - This account is used to track bank accounts such as checking, savings, and money market
2. Credit card - This account is used to track credit card transactions in your merchant accounts
3. Cash - This account is used to track cash transactions including petty cash
3. Enter the account balance
1. If this is a brand new account , the account balance will be $0.00. If it is an existing account, like a checking account, enter in your current account balance. 
4. If desired, enter the description
5. If you would like this account to be the default account when adding payments select the "Default Payment" Checkbox

How to Track Credit Card transactions in a Merchant Account

To track credit card processing in a merchant account create a bookkeeping account with the type set to credit card.

How to Transfer Money Between Accounts

Sometimes there is a transfer from one account to another that is not income or expense for either account.  Use the transfer option to record these transactions.

1. Go to the Bookkeeping details section
1. Click on the Bookkeeping component
2. Click on the Accounts tab
3. Click the Account Details button
2. Click the Actions button and click the Transfer Between Accounts option
3. Select the date for the transfer
4. Select the account it is coming from and going into
5. Enter the amount of the transfer
6. Optionally enter notes
7. Click the Save button

How to Split Income and Expense Entries

Sometimes businesses need to split an income or expense entry so that they can assign parts of the entry to different categories.  This is commonly done when tracking credit card processing fees

1. Go to the Bookkeeping Details
1. Go to the Bookkeeping component
2. Select the Accounts tab
3. Click the Account Details menu button
2. Find and edit the entry that you want to split
3. Click the Add Split button
4. Enter the Amount for the split and select the Category
5. Click the Save button for the Split window
6. Click the Save button for the Edit window

How to Reconcile Your Accounts and Mark Ledger Entries as Completed

This article explains how to reconcile your accounts in StudioCloud with supporting documents from your bank. This ensures that all income/expenses have been properly accounted for.

1. Go to the Bookkeeping Reports
1. Click on the Bookkeeping component
2. Click on the Reports tab
2. Click the Reconcile Transactions button to open the Reconciling Transactions window
   
3. Select the Account you want to reconcile and the time frame your bank statement is for
1. Find each transaction on your bank statement in the list and click the checkbox for that transaction
1. As you do this the Total Amount of Selected Entries will increase which allows you to see the total amount of the transactions you have selected
2. Once you are ready to reconcile the transactions you have selected you can use the Group Operations button to mark the selected entries as completed or reconciled
4. When you are done using this window you will close it by clicking the black X in the top right corner of the window

How to Reconcile a Merchant Account That Uses Batch Processing

In order to reconcile credit card transactions you have to track the transactions in the Merchant Account and not in your bank account. There is not a system where you can track the individual credit card transactions once they have been transferred out of the merchant account because they are transferred in a lump sum after credit card fees have been removed from the account

Merchant accounts provide various ways to process credit cards. They can process them each individually or they can process a bunch of them all at once. If they process them all at once it is called batch processing. 

Usually merchant accounts give various options on when credit cards can be batch processed such as "end of day", "end of week", etc. Batch processing saves on fees making it an enticing option for many businesses. 

To track individual transactions that use batch processing do the following steps:

1. Setup a bookkeeping account with the type set to "credit card" using the instructions under "How to create/edit a bookkeeping account"
1. We recommend making this bookkeeping account be the default account
2. Move any payments that are not credit card payments into a different bookkeeping account such as a bank bookkeeping account or cash bookkeeping account
2. Match each credit card payment in StudioCloud with the credit card payment in your merchant account using the instructions "How to reconcile your accounts and mark ledger entries as completed"
1. Add in the credit card fees to each payment as an expense in StudioCloud by splitting it using the instructions under the "How to split income and expenses entries"
3. Record a transfer from your Merchant account to your bank bookkeeping account using the instructions under the header "How to transfer money between accounts"