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Loans and the account statement

In ZeniCash, the outstanding balance of a loan does not need an account of its own. Each entity (customer, supplier, or "Other") has a current account — a statement with an accumulated balance — and that is where the loan is tracked, just as it works with customer and supplier invoices.

How to read the current account balance

The current account balance of an entity follows a single convention and is always shown in the entity's currency:

Invoices, payments, advances, and loans for the same entity offset one another into a single net balance. For that reason, to track a loan in isolation, it is recommended to use a dedicated entity per borrower.

Lending to or receiving from a third party (advances)

To lend money to someone (or to record a loan they made to you), without creating any new account, use the Advances area:

  1. Create an entity (for example of the "Other" type) for the borrower/lender.
  2. When lending: in Advances, record an "Advance granted" (an expense). The money leaves your account and the entity's current account now shows the amount receivable.
  3. When they pay you back (partial or full): record an "Advance received" (an income). The current account balance decreases, reaching zero when the loan is settled.

The outstanding amount always remains visible in the entity's current account balance. Advances do not require any special configuration on the entity.

Business money in a personal account, and the other way round

It is common to pay a business expense with personal money (for example, when the business account has no funds), to receive into a personal account what a client of the business paid, or to pay a personal expense from the business account. The movement stays on its own side — professional or personal — and keeps its real category (for example, "Software") in reports; but the business and your own pocket now owe each other money. From version 1.7.2, this is recorded on the movement itself.

The rule: when the side of the movement (marked Professional or not) differs from the side of the account the money went through, the movement also goes onto the current account of your business — the entity kept in Settings › Premium › My business.

What happened → what to record → on the business's current account

How to record it

  1. Record the expense or the income as usual: the account the money went through, the real category and, if there is one, the supplier or client as the entity — with or without a document.
  2. Turn Professional on or off to match the movement. The order does not matter: choosing a personal account no longer removes the mark. On a new movement, choosing the business account turns the mark on; for a personal expense paid from the business account, turn it off.
  3. When the two sides differ, the form shows the box Track on the entity statement (loan), with the name of your business under it, already ticked. Leave it ticked and save.

The box needs Premium, your business saved in My business with its entity, and the Both mode in Settings › Formats › Professional. It does not appear on transfers, which have a box of their own (below), on advances, or when the entity chosen is your business itself — the old way, also below.

With and without a document

Paying or receiving a document through an account of the other side — in Documents › To Pay or To Receive, with the Paid / Received button; for example, an invoice from a supplier of the business paid from a personal account — shows the same box. The document is settled on the supplier's or client's current account, and the payment also goes onto your business's current account.

When paying a document, there is no Professional button to turn on or off: from version 1.7.3, the payment takes the document's side, whatever account pays it. A professional invoice paid from a personal account is a professional expense on that personal account — and so the box appears. Professional and personal documents cannot be paid together in one movement: the app asks to select only one side.

Without a document, the movement appears only on your business's current account: a supplier's or client's current account is made of documents and their payments.

How it shows on the business's current account

From version 1.7.8 the wallet is named there in the app's language, as in these examples; before, those lines showed __wallet__.

Tapping a row opens the movement. Unticking the box or deleting the movement takes it off your business's current account. In reports, each movement counts once, with its real category, and it does not appear in Advances. In the accountant package, the same rows appear on your business's statement.

Settling up: a transfer between the business and your pocket

When money actually moves from one account to the other, record a transfer. With Premium and the Both mode, a transfer between a personal account and a business account shows a box of its own, Track on the entity statement (loan), with Business and personal under it — unticked by default. Ticked, the transfer also goes onto your business's current account, following the money: from the business account to your personal account, it reduces what the business owes you; from your personal account to the business account, it adds to it (or reduces what you owe the business). So, when the business pays you back what you paid for it, record a transfer from the business account to your personal account with the box ticked.

The old way: the business itself as the entity

Before version 1.7.2, the only way was to choose as the movement's entity whoever owes you — the business itself, for example — with "Loan account" turned on. It keeps working, and it serves any entity of the "Other" type that owes you money; but the movement loses the real supplier, because its entity becomes whoever owes.

Step 1 — Prepare the entity

  1. Open (or create) the "Other" type entity that represents whoever will owe you.
  2. Turn on the "Loan account" switch.

After this, any movement associated with that entity is automatically treated as a loan in its current account — with no per-entry switch.

Step 2 — Record the expense

  1. Record the expense as usual, with its real category (for example "Software") and select the entity prepared in step 1.
  2. Save.

The form shows only a (non-editable) indication — "Track on the entity statement (loan)" — confirming that the movement will be recorded as a loan. There is nothing to turn on or off: the decision comes from the entity.

The result:

When they return the amount to you, record the return as an income on the same entity: the current account balance decreases to zero.

The loan and the document: two different things

The words Track on the entity statement (loan) appear in three places in the movement form. In all of them, the movement also goes onto an entity's current account, as a loan:

Post to current account is something else: a checkbox that appears when you type a document number on a movement with an entity. When ticked, it creates a document (invoice) already paid in the entity's current account; when unticked, it stores the number only as a reference, without recording anything in the current account. It is an independent feature.

What is overdue

From version 1.5.0, an unpaid document whose due date has passed shows Overdue and its due date in the statement, and the list of entities shows the overdue amount of each. A document due today is not overdue yet. A document saved without a due date is due on its own date.

Deleting a payment linked to a document

When a movement created a document in the current account (the "Post to current account" checkbox case above), deleting that movement also removes the document — the payment and the document go together. Before deleting, the app warns: "Delete payment and document?". On confirming, both are removed and the document no longer appears in Account statement or in To Pay.

Notes

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