Sometimes your business activity may happen outside of your bank or credit card accounts. Cash income and expenses are one example of that. Ambrook allows you to manually track the balance of your “Cash on Hand" by either recording transactions or creating them directly from your receipts.
Setting Up Your Cash Account
To record a cash transaction, you need a balance sheet account to record it to. You may already have a Cash on Hand account by default in Ambrook, but if you don't, you will need to create it. You may also need to set a starting balance on the account so that the balance over time is correct as you record transactions.
Creating a Cash on Hand account
Go to the Accounts page.
Click New Account.
Choose Cash as the account type.
Enter an Account Name (for example, "Cash on Hand"), your Starting Balance and your Starting Date.
Starting Balance: the amount of cash you're holding outside of your bank account as of the starting date.
Starting Date: the date you want to start tracking this account in Ambrook. Pick a date on or before your earliest receipt. You can't record transactions dated before an account's starting date.
Click Save.
The account will now show up in the Account box when you create a transaction.
Setting your starting balance
Go to the Accounts page.
Click on the Cash on Hand account.
Scroll down on the menu to the Details section.
Click the Starting Balance amount.
Update the balance to be the amount of cash you currently are holding outside of your bank account. You can also update the Starting Date here.
Click Confirm to save your starting balance.
Note: If your Cash on Hand account was created by default, its starting date may be set to January 1 of the year you joined. If you're recording transactions from before that date, adjust the account starting date first.
Entering a Cash Transaction
Once your beginning balance is set, you can record Cash transactions as they occur. You can create transactions either manually from the Ledger or by uploading a receipt.
Adding Cash Transactions Manually
To create a new transaction manually:
Go to the Ledger.
Click the New button at the top of the Ledger.
Select Transaction.
Choose Cash on Hand (or the account you created) as the Account.
Enter whether it's an income or expense and the amount, date and description for the transaction.
Click Save to record the transaction to your Ledger.
You can now tag the transaction to the appropriate income or expense category.
Have a lot of transactions to enter? You can also bulk upload them from a spreadsheet. See How to Bulk Import Transactions.
Adding Cash Transactions from a Receipt
To create a cash transaction from a receipt:
Go to the Receipts page.
Upload or take a photo of a receipt (see Managing Receipts for detailed instructions on uploading receipts)
Once the receipt has uploaded, click the Review button on the receipt.
Choose Create New Transaction.
In the Transaction window that opens, select Cash on Hand (or the account you created) as the Account..
Add the amount, date and description for the receipt.
Select Save. This will create a new cash transaction on your Ledger linked to this receipt.
Cash transactions can be broken into line items or have receipts attached just like any other transaction.
Note: Ambrook's receipt technology attempts to help you by reading information from some receipts such as the receipt amount, date, and line items. Its accuracy depends on the quality of the photo as well as the format of the receipt.
You can always edit the amount, date, line items and description when creating the transaction, so don't worry if some details are initially read incorrectly.
Deleting a Cash Transaction
To delete a cash transaction (or any transaction you created manually):
Click on the transaction from the Ledger.
Scroll down to the bottom of the panel.
Click Delete Transaction.
Don’t worry about accidentally clicking the Delete Transaction button. After you click it once, we ask you to confirm your decision.
Recorded a transaction to the wrong account?
You can't currently change the account on a manually created transaction. To correct it you will need to delete the transaction and re-create it in the correct account. If a receipt is attached, unmatch the receipt so it goes back to your Receipts page (or save a copy of the file first if not uploaded to Receipts).
For more on creating and managing accounts, see Adding, Editing and Deleting Balance Sheet Accounts.
Withdrawing Cash from the Bank or an ATM
When you take cash out of a connected bank account or with your Ambrook card, the withdrawal shows up in your Ledger. How you tag it depends on what the cash was for.
If you'll spend the cash over time, or aren't sure yet what it's for
The money hasn't been spent yet; it has just moved from your bank to your pocket. Record it as a move into Cash on Hand so it doesn't show up as an expense:
Find the withdrawal in your Ledger and click Category.
Under Record on Balance Sheet, select Asset Adjustment. (You can also type "Cash on Hand" in the search box and pick it directly.)
Choose Cash on Hand as the account.
Click Done.
Your Cash on Hand balance goes up by the amount you withdrew. As you spend the cash, add each purchase as a expense transaction on the Cash on Hand account and tag it to the right category.
Important: Don't create the withdrawal transaction in your Cash on Hand account. Tagging the bank withdrawal as an Asset Adjustment already records it in the Cash on Hand account. Adding it manually would count the same money twice.
If you spent all of it right away on one thing
If you pulled out cash and spent it the same day, for example $300 to pay day labor that afternoon, you can skip Cash on Hand and tag the withdrawal straight to that expense category and enterprise.
If the cash was for personal use
Tag it as Equity Adjustment to your owner's draw account. This keeps personal spending off your Profit & Loss.
Depositing Cash into the Bank
When you deposit cash you were holding, such as farmers market sales, the deposit shows up in your Ledger on the bank account. The cash was already counted when transactions were created in your Cash on Hand account, so the deposit just moves it back:
Find the deposit in your Ledger and click Category.
Select Asset Adjustment.
Choose Cash on Hand as the account.
Click Done.
Cash on Hand goes down and your bank balance goes up, with nothing added to income.
If you didn't record the cash transactions in Cash on Hand first, tag the deposit to the right income category instead. If the cash paid an invoice, see Marking an invoice as paid by cash.