Company, Fiscal Year and Departments

Every company-wide choice in BizBooks360 lives under Settings in the left menu. The first page, Overview, groups the pages into cards: Company, Accounting, Closing and books, Users and plan and Your account, followed by one card for each module the books use (Projects, Timekeeping, Property Management, Payroll). Each line names a page, says in a few words what it holds, and shows its state at the right. The Company card has five lines; the last, Policies, keeps the business's written procedures, their versions and who has read them. A yellow tag means something still needs your attention; a green tag means it is in order.

The settings in this volume apply to everyone who opens these books. They are not personal preferences. Change them with the same care you would give to a journal entry, and tell the people who share the books.

Settings → Company → Company information. The page is a column of cards, all saved by one Save changes button near the foot. Five tabs along the top lead to the other pages of the Company group: Company information, Fiscal year and reporting, Departments, Menus and words and Policies.

Below the main form are three cards with their own buttons: Return facts (the activity code and method the Tax Report prints, Chapter 6.8), State numbers for Forms 1099 (Chapter 6.9), and Delete these books (below). Each acts on its own; the main Save changes does not touch them.

Delete these books

The last card on the page removes the whole set of books, for everyone who can open it: every transaction, contact, product, report and document. Only the owner of the books can use it. A member whose permissions include deleting books still sees the button, but the request is refused: only the owner can schedule a deletion. Pressing Delete these books opens a dialog that asks you to type the phrase DELETE COMPANY BOOKS, in capitals; the red button in the dialog stays greyed out until the phrase matches.

The deletion does not happen at once. From the moment you confirm, the books become read-only and are deleted 30 days later.³ Every page of the books shows a red banner, These books are scheduled for deletion on <date>. They are read-only until then. The owner sees a Cancel deletion button in it. Cancelling makes the books changeable again (The deletion is cancelled. The books can be changed again.). The books cannot be scheduled for deletion while they still keep copies of Forms 1099 or hold contract cost records; the page then says why.

Summit has launched a website and set up a shared office mailbox, and wants both on every invoice. The ZIP code is also being brought up to the full nine-digit ZIP+4 the post office gave the store, 97703-4416.

1. 1

   Open the page and type the new details

   Open Settings → Company information. In Website type https://summit-outfitters.example; in Email type office@summit-outfitters.example. In ZIP code type 97703-4416.

2. 2

   Do not leave a required box empty

   While retyping the address, the bookkeeper cleared the City box by accident and pressed Save changes. The page refuses the whole save: nothing on any card is stored until every box marked with a red star is filled.

1. 3

   Fix the field and save again

   Type Bend back in City, check the other boxes are still as you typed them, and press Save changes. A green banner confirms the save.

2. 4

   Read back what was stored

   Look at the ZIP code. The box takes digits only, so the dash you typed is dropped and the ZIP is stored as 977034416, nine digits. That is the form the help line under the box asks for (5 or 9 digits, no dash), and it is what a 1099 FIRE file needs.

1. 5

   Check the change history

   Press Change history at the top right. Each save is listed with its date and time, newest first. The list tells you when the details changed, not which field: keep a short note in your month-end file of what you changed and why.

A fiscal year is the twelve-month period the business measures its results over. Most small businesses use the calendar year, ending December 31. Seasonal businesses often end the year at their quietest month, so that the year-end stock count and the closing work fall when the shop is slow. Many retailers end their year on January 31, after the holiday returns are in.

Settings → Fiscal year and reporting holds three choices and one switch:

• Accounting method. Accrual counts income when invoiced and expenses when billed; cash counts them when the money moves. This is the method each new report starts on. It is the same setting as on Company information.
• Fiscal year end, as month and day, mm/dd.
• Closing period: how much of the year Close Books closes at a time: a month, a quarter or a year. If the year does not end on 12/31, choose Yearly, on a fiscal year that ends on another day.
• Void entries of a closed period by a dated reversal, a tick box, off unless you tick it. When it is on, voiding an entry dated in a closed period leaves the closed month as it was printed and posts a reversal on the first open day instead. Saving with it ticked adds a line to the green banner: An entry of a closed period is voided by a dated reversal on the first open day. Close Books (Chapter 15.5) explains closed periods.

Summit's owner asked whether the year could end with February, after ski season. The bookkeeper opened the page to see what the books would accept before taking the question to the accountant.

1. 1

   Type the year end

   In Fiscal year end the bookkeeper typed 02/29, the last day of February in 2028, and pressed Save changes.

2. 2

   Read the refusal

   The page refused it and saved nothing. The year end comes round every year, and most years have no February 29: a 02/29 year end would fall on March 1 in three years out of four. For a year that ends with February the page asks for 02/28.

1. 3

   Leave the page, or save a real decision

   Summit's accountant advised keeping the calendar year for now, because the corporation's tax year is the calendar year.⁵ The bookkeeper left the page with Back to settings, so 12/31 and Yearly, on the calendar year stayed as they were. Had the decision been to change, the steps are: type 02/28, choose Yearly, on a fiscal year that ends on another day, and save.

A department is a cost center: a part of the business whose costs you want to see on their own. People and their pay rates are assigned to one, hours are clocked against one, and payroll reports can be run by one. An entry keeps the department it was recorded with, so moving a person to another department later does not rewrite last month.

Summit has two sides that cost money in different ways: the retail store, and the rentals and guiding business. Its owner wants staff costs split between them.

1. 1

   Add the first department

   Open Settings → Departments and press New department (or Add the first department on an empty list). Type Retail store and press Add department. A banner confirms "Retail store" was added.

1. 2

   Add the second, and watch for duplicates

   Add Rentals and guiding the same way. A colleague then tried to add retail store in lower case, not seeing that it was already there. The dialog refused it: names are compared without regard to capitals, and each department needs its own name, so reports never show two lines for the same cost center.

• [x] The legal name matches the registration; the book name is easy to recognise in the company list.
• [x] Street, city, state, ZIP and phone are filled in, so 1099 FIRE files can be made.
• [x] Entity type and EIN are right, and the overview shows EIN on file.
• [x] The time zone is where the business keeps its books.
• [x] The fiscal year end and closing period are agreed with the accountant before the first close.
• [x] Departments exist for each cost center you want to report on, each with its own name.
• [x] A note of what changed, and why, is in your month-end file.
• [x] Before anyone schedules a deletion, a full backup exists and everyone who uses the books has been told.