Financial Reports

The Reports screen is where the work you have done in invoices, bills, payments, and journals turns into something you can show a board, a bank, or your CPA. The Books frontend today exposes three fully built reports — Trial Balance, Income Statement, and Balance Sheet — plus a Cash Flow Statement that is partially built (the structure is in place; some sections are placeholders). Aging and account-level statements live elsewhere in the product (see below).

This guide walks through what each report is for, how to read it, and the date-range and export controls that apply to all of them.

Getting There

• Click Reports in the left sidebar
• Pick the report you want from the report selector at the top

If Reports is missing, the accounting module is disabled on your entity. Open Settings → Enable Accounting to turn it on.

Common Controls

Every report has the same toolbar:

• Date range — start and end dates (or just an end date for as-of reports)
• View mode — Statement (formatted, ready to print) or Table (compact)
• Export PDF — Download a polished PDF
• Print — Open a print-friendly window
• Refresh — Re-run the report against current data

Reports run in real time against the ledger. If you post a new transaction and refresh, it shows up immediately.

Trial Balance

As-of report: takes one date

The Trial Balance is a list of every account with its balance — debit side or credit side — on a single date. The total debits should equal the total credits.

Use it to:

• Confirm the books are internally consistent (debits = credits)
• See where everything stands at a snapshot in time
• Hand to your accountant as the starting point for any analysis

If your Trial Balance does not balance, there is a data integrity problem — typically from an opening-balance import where the source numbers themselves did not balance. Investigate before going further.

Income Statement (Profit & Loss)

Range report: takes start and end dates

The Income Statement shows revenue minus expenses for a date range. The bottom line — net income — tells you whether you made or lost money in that period.

It is structured as:

Revenue Operating Revenue Non-Operating Revenue Total Revenue ──┐ │ Less: Cost of Sales / Direct Expense ──┘ Gross Profit ───┐ │ Less: Operating Expense ───────────────┘ Operating Income ─┐ │ Less / Plus: Non-Operating ──────────────┘ Net Income

Use it to:

• See profitability by period (month, quarter, year)
• Compare to budget or to prior periods
• Identify which expense categories are consuming margin

Balance Sheet

As-of report: takes one date

The Balance Sheet shows what the company owns (assets), owes (liabilities), and is worth to its owners (equity) on a single date. The fundamental rule:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

It is structured as:

ASSETS Current Assets (Cash, A/R, Inventory, Prepaid) Non-Current Assets (Equipment, Long-term Investments) Total Assets LIABILITIES Current Liabilities (A/P, Short-term Loans) Non-Current Liabilities (Long-term Debt) Total Liabilities EQUITY Owner Contributions Retained Earnings Current Year Net Income Total Equity Liabilities + Equity (must equal Total Assets)

Use it to:

• See the company's financial position at a point in time
• Hand to lenders or investors
• Track debt-to-equity, working capital, and other position ratios

Cash Flow Statement

Range report: takes start and end dates

Status: preview / partial — the report selector includes Cash Flow but the underlying view is still being built. A full Cash Flow Statement is on the roadmap.

The Cash Flow Statement shows how cash moved in and out during a period, broken into three sections:

• Operating activities — Cash from running the business (collections, payments to vendors, payroll)
• Investing activities — Cash from buying or selling assets (equipment, investments)
• Financing activities — Cash from borrowing, repaying loans, owner contributions/distributions

Net change in cash should reconcile the cash balance at the start of the period to the cash balance at the end.

Use it to:

• See whether the business is generating cash or burning it
• Distinguish operating cash flow (the truly recurring kind) from financing (one-off raises) or investing (capex)
• Hand to lenders, who care about cash flow much more than accounting profit

Aging Schedules — Where to Find Them

The aging data is exposed today on the Dashboard rather than in the Reports screen. The Dashboard shows Outstanding Invoices and Outstanding Bills with aging buckets returned by the API (current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, 90+ days). Drill into a customer or vendor by name from there.

A dedicated AR / AP Aging view in the Reports screen — with PDF export and per-customer / per-vendor breakdown — is on the roadmap. The underlying API endpoints (/reports/aging/receivables and /reports/aging/payables) already exist and can be called directly if needed.

Account Statement

An account statement is the per-account version of a ledger — every transaction that hit the account in a date range, with running balance.

Open it from Accounts → click an account → Statement.

Use it to:

• Investigate a balance you do not recognize
• Reconcile against an external source (bank, credit card, vendor statement)
• Hand to an auditor as the audit trail for a specific account

The Account Statement is not currently surfaced in the Reports screen; reach it from the Accounts list.

Account Schedule

The API supports an Account Schedule endpoint for structured drill-downs (fixed assets cost / accumulated depreciation / net book value, for example). A frontend view is on the roadmap; for now, request it via the API.

Multi-Currency Reports

Every report is presented in the entity's base currency. Foreign-currency transactions are translated using the exchange rate captured at transaction time.

If you need a report in a foreign currency, the workflow today is to export the data and re-translate externally. Native foreign-currency reports are on the roadmap.

See Multi-Currency (UG-070) for how exchange rates are captured.

Exporting Reports

Every report supports:

• PDF export — A polished, board-ready document with the company name in the header
• Print — Opens a print preview in a new window
• CSV — Some reports can be exported as raw data for spreadsheet analysis (look for the "Table" view mode)

PDFs are formatted in a serif font (Libre Baskerville) for the financial statements themselves and a monospace font (JetBrains Mono) for amounts — chosen for legibility and a financial-document look.

Period Selection Tips

• End-of-month dates — For monthly reporting, use the last day of the month (Jan 31, Feb 28/29, etc.) as the end date
• Year-to-date — Start of fiscal year through today
• Quarter-to-date — First day of the quarter through today
• Trailing twelve months — End date today, start date one year earlier
• Comparison — Books does not yet support side-by-side period comparison. Run two reports for the periods you want to compare.

Common Questions

Tips and Best Practices

• Run a Trial Balance after every month-end. It catches data problems before they snowball.
• Run the Income Statement and Balance Sheet together. Net income on the IS becomes part of equity on the BS — they should agree.
• Reconcile your bank feeds before running cash flow. Otherwise the cash bucket will be off.
• Watch the AR Aging weekly. The longer a receivable ages, the less likely it is to be collected.
• Send your CPA the Trial Balance, IS, BS, and Cash Flow at the same time at year-end. Together they tell the whole story.
• Save key PDFs at every period close. Reports change over time as new transactions are entered (a back-dated invoice this week affects last month's numbers); a snapshot fixes the report as it stood at close.

Related Guides

• UG-004 — Bookkeeping Concepts
• UG-010 — Chart of Accounts
• UG-040 — Journal Entries and Transactions
• UG-070 — Multi-Currency
• UG-060 — Data Import