Close your books each month

Open Money, Books for each month's profit and loss and cash: sales less refunds, what you earned, Allpage's and Stripe's fees, and what was paid out to your bank. Sales tax you collected is shown on its own, since it isn't income.

Money paid ahead counts when you earn it. A membership counts over the month it covers, a pack (or a package of packs) as each visit is used, and a booked course as each session runs. Gift cards and store credit count when they're spent.

Close a month

Once a month is over and the numbers look right, choose Close month. We suggest closing each month once your accountant has seen it.

• Its numbers stop changing. Anything dated in it later, like a late refund, goes into the next open month with a note.
• Closing a month closes every month before it too.
• You can't reopen a closed month.

Keep your books in step

Connect QuickBooks or Xero on Books and the day before goes in once a day as one journal. Allpage adds its own accounts the first time and never changes anything else in your books. A closed month never gets new journals. Without QuickBooks or Xero, download the month as a spreadsheet for your accountant.

These numbers cover money that went through Allpage. They're information for you and your accountant, not tax or accounting advice.

For agents

• finance.report (month) gives the profit and loss, cash, what's owed and whether the month can close.
• finance.closeMonth (month) closes it and every month before it. It waits for the owner's OK. Say plainly that it can't be reopened.
• finance.periods lists closed months. finance.export gives a month's journals as CSV.
• Connecting books is the owner's own step: integrations.connect with integration quickbooks or xero answers a link for them.