Accounts and expenses

What you'll do

Set up where your centre's money sits, record what goes out as well as what comes in, and read your cash position for any period. Fees you collect post here on their own; expenses you enter yourself.

Before you start

• Ten minutes to list your real money containers: the front-desk cash drawer, each mobile wallet, each bank account.
• The opening balance of each one — what was in it the day before you started using CampusQ.
• Finances permissions for accounts and categories; Expenses permissions for the cash book itself. Both are needed for the full picture.
• The Accounts menu is under Finance and is flagged as advanced, so it is hidden while your menu is in starter mode. Switch to the full menu to see it.

What this is — and what it is not

CampusQ's accounts module is a single-entry cash book — a khata. Every entry is one line: a date, an account, a category, a direction and an amount. That is the right size for a coaching centre and it is honest about its limits:

• It cannot produce a trial balance or a balance sheet. There is no double-entry behind it, no chart of accounts in the accounting sense, no debits and credits pairing off. If your accountant asks for formal financial statements, this module will not produce them, and no setting turns that on.
• It can tell you what came in, what went out, what is left in each account, and where the money went by category — which is what a centre director actually asks.
• Nothing is ever edited and nothing is ever deleted. A mistake is corrected by posting an opposite entry beside it.

Tell your accountant that up front. It is much better than finding out in March.

Step 1 — Money accounts

Go to Accounts → Money Accounts — Where the centre's money sits: cash drawer, mobile wallets, bank accounts. — and press Add account.

Money Accounts — Opening, Income, Expense, Balance and Entries per accountScreenshot pending

Set the opening balance now, because it locks. Once an account has a single entry the field is disabled and reads Locked — this account already has entries. Try anyway and you get Opening balance is locked — This account already has entries, so its opening balance cannot change. Post a correcting entry in the cash book instead. The reason is sound: changing it would silently rewrite every balance ever shown or printed off that account.

The type is not cosmetic. When a student pays by bKash, the payment is routed to a bKash-type account, falling back to your default. Getting the types right is what makes the balances match your actual wallets.

You cannot delete an account that has been used. The account already has entries and is part of the financial record. Deactivate it instead. Clear the Active checkbox — the account keeps its history and stops being offered for new entries. Balances are recomputed from the cash book on every load, never stored.

Step 2 — Categories

Accounts → Categories — What income and expenditure gets filed under. You start with a set of built-in ones, marked Built in in the Source column; yours show as Yours.

Add category asks for very little, and one of the answers is permanent:

• Category name — up to 100 characters, e.g. Electricity bill.
• Direction — Income or Expense, with the warning Choose carefully — this cannot be changed once the category is saved. On an existing category it is a read-only badge: Cannot be changed after creation.
• Active — An inactive category stays on old entries but is not offered for new ones.

Direction is immutable for a real reason: flipping it would reverse the sign of every historical entry filed under that category, silently rewriting months of reporting. If you created "Rent" as Income by mistake, deactivate it and create a new one.

Built-in categories and categories with entries cannot be deleted: Built-in categories and categories that already have entries cannot be deleted. Deactivate it instead.

Keep the list short. Twelve categories you actually use beat forty you have to choose between.

Step 3 — The cash book

Accounts → Cash Book — Every taka in and out, in one place. Entries are corrected by reversal, never deleted.

The Cash Book — every entry with its account, category, source and directionScreenshot pending

Columns are Actions, Date, Account, Category, Description, Source, Income and Expense.

Source is the column to understand. It tells you whether a line was typed by a person or posted by the system:

So you do not enter fee income by hand. It is already there. Entering it again double-counts your month. What you enter here is everything the system does not know about: rent, electricity, printing, tea, repairs, and any income that did not come through a payment screen.

Filters: Account, Direction, Category (Pick direction first), a date range, and Source. Then Apply or Reset. There is a search box over descriptions — which is the argument for writing useful ones.

Record an expense

Press Add entry.

1. Account — which container the money left.
2. Direction — Income or Expense. Defaults to Expense, because that is what you are usually here for.
3. Category — the list is filtered to categories matching the direction.
4. Amount — must be above zero.
5. Date — defaults to today.
6. Description (optional) — e.g. August rent, up to 500 characters. Write it as if you will be searching for it in eleven months, because you will.
7. Save entry.

There is an AI helper beside the description: Suggest category, with the promise Suggestion only — nothing is filled in until you accept it. It reads what you typed and proposes one of your own categories — it cannot invent one — and shows it as Suggested category: with its direction. Press Use it or Ignore. Nothing is applied until you press Use it. If you ask before typing anything you get Write a description first, then ask for a suggestion., and when nothing fits, No confident match among your categories. Pick one yourself.

Transfer between accounts

Moving cash from the drawer to the bank is not income and it is not an expense. Press Transfer.

Transfer between accounts — both legs are written together and neither counts as income or expenseScreenshot pending

The dialog says exactly what it does: Moves money between two of your own accounts. Both sides are written together, and neither counts as income or expense. Fill in From, To, Amount, Date and an optional Description, then Record transfer. Two different accounts, or you get Choose two different accounts.

A transfer leg shows the italic word Transfer in the Category column, and the footnote under the table repeats the rule: Transfers between your own accounts move balances but are not counted as income or expense.

This is the single most common misunderstanding on this screen. A month in which you banked ৳50 000 of cash does not have ৳50 000 more income.

Correcting a mistake

There is no Edit and there is no Delete on a cash book entry. Not hidden behind a permission — the actions do not exist. The only correction is Reverse, on the row menu.

The dialog is explicit: The original entry stays in the book. A mirror-image correcting entry is added, and both keep their own author and timestamp.

• Reason is required — e.g. Amount entered twice, 3 to 500 characters.
• Post the correction on lets you date the correction, which matters if the wrong entry was in a month you have already reported on.
• Press Reverse entry.

Afterwards the original carries a Reversed badge and the new line carries Correction. You cannot reverse a reversal (A correcting entry cannot itself be reversed.) and you cannot reverse the same entry twice (This entry has already been reversed.).

Entered ৳5 000 that should have been ৳500? Reverse the ৳5 000 with a reason, then add a fresh ৳500 entry. Both stay visible. That is the point.

Reading the overview

Accounts → Overview — Your centre's cash position for the selected period. Set From date and To date and press Apply, or press This month.

Accounts overview — Income, Expense, Net and Cash in hand for the selected periodScreenshot pending

Four tiles: Income, Expense, Net and Cash in hand. Below them a note you should read once: Transfers between your own accounts are excluded from income and expense, but they do move the balances below.

Balances by account lists Account, Type, Opening, Income, Expense and Closing — this is the table you hold against your actual cash drawer at the end of the day. Then Income by category and Expense by category, each showing the entry count beside the name.

There is a Monthly summary panel that writes a short narrative of the month in English or বাংলা: press Generate. Its explainer states the boundary — A short written summary of the month, generated from totals and category names only — no student or teacher details are sent. It is a reading aid for a board meeting, not a source of record. The panel does not appear if your installation has no AI key configured.

Notes

• Single-entry, by design. No trial balance, no balance sheet, no double entry. Say so before somebody plans around it.
• Fee income posts itself. Do not re-enter payments by hand.
• Transfers are not income. They move balances and are excluded from the income and expense totals.
• Nothing is edited, nothing is deleted. Reversal only, with a mandatory reason, actor and timestamp — the ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 answer to who changed a financial figure.
• Opening balance and category direction lock. Both would silently rewrite history if they did not.
• Deactivate, do not delete. Accounts and categories with entries refuse deletion.
• Balances are always computed from the entries, never stored, so they cannot drift out of step with the book.
• The Accounts menu is hidden in starter mode. Switch to the full menu.
• Currency and dates display in Bangladesh format on these screens regardless of the language you are using.
• Synthetic examples only. Front desk cash, August rent and 01XXXXXXXXX here are invented.

Troubleshooting

My income looks twice as big as it should. Almost always fee payments entered by hand on top of the ones that posted themselves. Filter the cash book by Source = Manual and look for lines that duplicate a Student payment. Reverse the manual ones with a reason.

A transfer to the bank did not show up as income. Correct. Transfers move balances and are excluded from income and expense on purpose.

I cannot change an opening balance. The account already has entries, so it is locked. Post a correcting entry in the cash book instead.

I created a category with the wrong direction. Direction cannot be changed after creation. Deactivate it and create a new one — the old entries keep their category.

I cannot delete an account or a category. Anything with entries is part of the financial record. Clear its Active checkbox instead.

I need a balance sheet for my accountant. CampusQ cannot produce one. This is a single-entry cash book. Export what it does have — see Reports — and have the accountant work from that.

The Accounts menu is not in my sidebar. Either your menu is in starter mode, or your role lacks Finances read. Both are worth checking before you assume the feature is missing.

Somebody entered ৳50 000 instead of ৳5 000 last month. Reverse it with a reason, dating the correction where it belongs, then post the right figure. Do not look for an edit button — there is not one.