Getting started with Bookkeeping Today

Welcome to Bookkeeping Today. This guide explains what you need to know to get started, set up your company, enter transactions and move on to reports, charting and VAT Returns.

Using the help

Every page has a question mark on the title (a ? icon) to help you with that page. Clicking the question mark will give you specific help abut that page. The help pages contain details and ideas that can't be explained on the page, so it's always worth checking the help to learn more.

Your first 10 minutes

Bookkeeping Today is made to be as simple as possible, so in your first 10 minutes you'll do the following:

Set up your first company.
Enter your first sales and purchases
Check out the reports and charts.
See a VAT Return / register for Making Tax Digital VAT Returns.

Setting up your first company

The first thing you do is add your company. If you don't have any companies set up yet, Bookkeeping Today will take you to the companies page automatically.

On the companies page click the New Company button to add your first company. This is just the basic information about your company:

Company name.
The country you trade in. We can add a country if yours isn't listed, just let us know.
Company VAT details.
A VAT scheme (standard or flat rate VAT returns).
Company name.

Enter a few sales and purchases

Once you have a company you can start entering your sales and purchases. To enter a sale go to the Sales page and click the New Item button to add a sale.

Use the help icon here for help on what each item on the page does. We strongly recommend you read this page.

The basic info you enter here is:

Customer name.
Transaction date.
The type of sale.
The value of the sale.

For some sales you might need to use the advanced options. Click the Advanced section to show more options:

Zero-EC and Customer VAT number. You only use these when you make an intra-EC zero rated sale.
VAT reporting date.

For more about these options, see the help page.

Purchases are entered in a similar way on the Purchases page.

Charts and reports

When you have a few transactions recorded, go back to the home page (click the Bookkeeping Today logo on the menu). You'll see the charts have started to show your data. Pick a date range and the charts will show you a good overview of your business during that period.

You can also go to the Reports page. Reports give you more detailed information. For example, this is how you see the total purchases per customer, with the best spenders at the top of the report:

Go to the Reports page and click on the Customer Summary report.
Choose the start and end dates for the time period you want to know about.
Click on Order By and select the Value Of Transactions option.
Choose HTML (best of viewing) or PDF (best for printing).
Click the View Report button to see your report.

Now you can see all your customers with the highest spenders shown first.

If you want to save a copy of a report (maybe to send to someone else) you can use the File/Save option in your web browser.

VAT Returns

The Reports page has a VAT Return report that will give your VAT figures for any period.

For Making Tax Digital VAT Returns in the UK, go to the Tools / HMRC page. Once you have authorised your account with HMRC, you can submit VAT Returns, view previous VAT Returns and more.

Finding out more

That should be enough to get you started. Remember the help icon is available, and more is available from the Help menu. If you have any questions you can also email us or contact us through the contact page.