Move Money

As VATStuff operates a double-entry system, all money movements between accounts follow the same steps:

1 - choose the accounts to credit (to move money out)

2 - choose the accounts to debit (to move money in)

The total credits in the transaction must equal total debits - rather like conservation of energy, money is neither created nor destroyed, just moved.

At its simplest, money is moved from one account to another, but it is quite possible for several accounts to be involved, as long as the totals add up.

Under the Move Money tab there is a 'Move Money' button at the top of the panel. Clicking this shows a window in which you can choose several accounts, and the amount to be debited or credited. At least two accounts must be chosen. You can also set the date of the transaction, and a text description. Pressing Apply will then submit the transaction, and if you view the accounts you will see the transaction has taken place.

If you have made a mistake, you can simply use the same mechanism to move the money back - or under the Admin tab you can choose the 'Undo' button which wipes out the last transaction.

User-defined moves

The remaining buttons under the Move Money tabbed panel are for user-defined moves. You may find that you are doing similar money moves on a regular basis, perhaps inputting mileage amounts, that may also have some simple arithmetic involved - for example 40 pence per mile multiplied by the number of miles travelled.

Choosing one of these buttons allows you to create a definition of such a move, and to save the definition to the button so you can repeat it again in future. You can create multiple definitions - saving each one to a button.

If you choose the bottom 'More' button you can create yet further definitions, listed by name, which may be useful if you want to associate a move with each employee for example.

Choosing a move definition button opens a window, which again shows accounts - and more complex choices in setting the amount to debit or credit. At least two accounts are needed for a transaction - the 'Action' column chooses whether to debit or credit the account. The 'Value' column sets an amount (for example 0.4 for 40 pence), the Operator and Operand columns then define an operation, such as x100 for 40 pence times 100 miles which will give a result of 40.00 pounds.

Rather than numbers in the Value and Operand fields, you can also type labels referring to previous lines, for example after working out how much to credit an account on line 1, you may want to debit an account on line 2 by an equal amount, in which case you could type 'Result1' in the Value field of line 2.

When the Calculate button is pressed it will take the result of line 1, and place it where you have put the Result1 label - in this case, into the Value field of line 2.

You can only refer to a line above, you cannot put a 'Result2' label in line 1.

As well as the 'Result' label, 'Value' and 'Operand' labels are also available, again followed by the line number they refer to.

You should also put descriptive text in the Button and Description fields - the Button text will be displayed on the button if you save this definition, and the Description text will become the transaction text.

Having set your rules, the buttons at the bottom of the window do the following:

Save - saves your definition to the button, but does not implement the transaction.

Apply - actually implements the transaction by putting the result into a Move Money form.

Close - closes the window

Calculate - just fills in the result column, does not submit or save the results.

At a later date, if you want to repeat the transaction you can choose the button, which will display the same window. You can then edit it, for example changing the number of miles - and press apply to quickly implement the new transaction.

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