JCO Bookkeeping Firm

📘 The JCO Books User Guide

Every feature, explained step by step — written for humans, not accountants. If you can use a smartphone, you can use JCO Books. Let's go! 🚀

New to bookkeeping itself? Start with our free Canadian book, free Philippine book, or the free blog — then come back and this guide will make even more sense.

⚡ Jump to Quick Start Open JCO Books →

⚡ Quick Start (5 Minutes)

Brand new? Do these five things and you'll be up and running:

Log in at jcobooks.pythonanywhere.com with the username and password JCO gave you. Bookkeepers use Bookkeeper Login; clients use Client Login (they look different on purpose!).
Pick your client — click Clients in the top menu, then click the business name. Everything in JCO Books is organized per client.
Record your first transaction — click 💵 Record money in/out. Money coming in (a sale, an owner investment) or money going out (rent, supplies). Pick the category, enter the amount, done!
Create an invoice — click 🧾 Invoices → New Invoice, add line items, save, then Email it straight to your customer.
Check your Reports — click 📊 Reports to see your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet update in real time. Magic! ✨

💡 New here? Ask JCO to turn on Demo Data (Dashboard → Load Demo) so you can click around a sample company without fear of breaking anything. Delete it when you're ready for the real thing.

🚪 Getting Started: Login & Navigation

Two doors, two logins

JCO Books has two separate login pages — and that's deliberate:

Login page	Who it's for	What they see
Bookkeeper Login (`/login`)	You, JCO staff	Everything: all clients, journals, settings, payroll — the full workshop.
Client Login (`/client-login`)	Your clients	Only their own business: invoices, receipts, reports. No journals, no other clients, no settings.

🔐 Security stuff, handled: passwords are encrypted, logins lock for 15 minutes after 5 wrong tries, and sessions expire after 60 minutes of inactivity. You don't have to think about any of this — it just works.

The top menu (bookkeeper view)

Dashboard — your home base: client list, key numbers at a glance.
Clients — add and manage client businesses.
🧾 Personal Tax — the Personal Tax Helper (employees' slips, deductions, estimates).
✅ Approvals — review staff-submitted transactions waiting for approval.
👥 Staff — manage team logins and roles (owner only).
📥 Migrate — import a chart of accounts from QuickBooks or Xero.
🌐 EN | TL — switch the interface between English and Taglish!
🏆 Get Certified — opens the free JCO Bookkeeping Self-Assessment.
❓ Help — quick answers inside the app.

Inside a client: the four action groups

Click a client and you'll see buttons organized into four friendly groups — this is your command center:

💰 Money — record money in/out, scan receipts, import bank CSV, bank rules, reconcile.
🧾 Sales & Purchases — invoices, quotes, reminders, purchase orders, expenses, time entries, fixed assets (plus Production & Recipes for manufacturers).
📊 Reports — every report, tax tools, branches, inventory, audit package.
⚙️ Manage — payroll, recurring transactions, budgets, close books, audit log, backup, document vault.

💡 See those little ❓ tooltips? Hover over them — JCO Books teaches you accounting as you go. No textbook required!

Business types: Service, Merchandising, Manufacturing

When you add a client, you pick what kind of business they are. This changes which features appear:

Type	Example	Extra features unlocked
Service	Consultant, salon, repair shop	The basics — invoices, expenses, payroll. Clean and simple.
Merchandising	Retail store, online shop	+ Inventory tracking, purchase orders, cost of goods sold.
Manufacturing	Bakery, food producer	+ Everything above, plus Production (raw materials → finished goods) and Recipes with costing.

You can switch a client's type anytime from their page — JCO Books adds the extra accounts automatically.

📒 Chart of Accounts (Plain English)

The chart of accounts is just a categorized list of "buckets" where money lives. Every dollar is always in a bucket. There are five bucket families — learn these and accounting suddenly makes sense:

🟢 Assets — what the business OWNS

Cash / Bank / Checking / Savings — actual money. (Duh, but let's be thorough! 😄)
Accounts Receivable — money customers owe YOU. You did the work, they haven't paid yet.
Inventory — stuff you bought to resell, sitting on shelves.
Raw Materials / Work in Process / Finished Goods — manufacturing stages: ingredients → half-baked → ready to sell. (Bakeries, this is you! 🍰)
Equipment, Vehicles, Buildings, Land — big things the business owns. Land never wears out; the rest get depreciated.
Accumulated Depreciation — tracks how much of your equipment's value has "been used up." (It's a contra-asset — it reduces the asset total.)
Prepaid Expenses — you paid early (like a year of insurance). It's an asset until you use it up.

🔴 Liabilities — what the business OWES

Accounts Payable — money YOU owe suppliers. The mirror image of Receivable.
Credit Card — yep, that balance.
Sales Tax Payable / GST/HST Payable / VAT Payable — tax you collected from customers but haven't sent to the government yet. It's not your money — you're just holding it! ⚖️
Payroll liabilities (CPP / EI / Income Tax Payable) — amounts withheld from paycheques, waiting to be remitted to CRA.
Loans Payable — short-term (due within a year) and long-term.
Unearned Revenue — a customer paid you in advance. You owe them the work!

🔵 Equity — the owner's stake

Owner's Capital — money the owner put INTO the business.
Owner's Drawings — money the owner took OUT for personal use. (Reduces equity!)
Retained Earnings — all past profits kept in the business. Grows every profitable year.

💰 Revenue — money EARNED

Sales Revenue — selling products.
Service Income — selling your time/skills.
Interest / Other Income — side earnings.

💸 Expenses — money SPENT

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) — what the sold stuff cost you. (Sales − COGS = gross profit!)
Rent, Salaries, Utilities, Insurance, Advertising… — the usual suspects, each with its own bucket so you can see exactly where money goes.
Depreciation Expense — the "using up" of equipment, recorded a little each month.

🧠 The golden rule: Debits = Credits. Always. Every transaction touches at least two buckets, and the two sides always balance. JCO Books enforces this automatically — you literally cannot post an unbalanced entry. If accounting had seatbelts, this would be them. 🛡️

Country extras

Depending on the client's country, JCO Books adds the right tax accounts automatically: GST/HST Payable and Input Tax Credits for Canada, VAT Payable for the Philippines. Manufacturing clients also get Direct Labor, Manufacturing Overhead, and Packaging Inventory.

💵 Recording Money In & Out

This is the heartbeat of bookkeeping. Click 💵 Record money in/out on the client page.

Choose Money In (income) or Money Out (expense).
Pick the category — e.g. Service Income for client payments, Rent Expense for rent. (This is where the chart of accounts buckets come in!)
Enter the amount, date, and which account it came from / went to (Cash or Bank).
Add a description — future-you will thank present-you. ("Starbucks" is not a description. "Client meeting — Starbucks" is. ☕)
Hit Save. JCO Books posts a balanced double-entry journal behind the scenes.

💡 Money In vs Invoice: Use Money In for cash received right now (no invoice needed). Use Invoices when you bill someone and they'll pay later — that creates an Accounts Receivable until they pay.

✏️ Made a mistake? Every transaction has an Edit button (bookkeepers only). Fix it, and the journals update automatically. There's also a ← Back arrow on every page.

📷 Receipt Scanner (Photo → Expense)

Bought something? Snap a photo — JCO Books reads it and fills in the expense for you. The text recognition happens on your device — your receipt photo is never uploaded anywhere for scanning. 🔒

Click 🧾 Scan Receipt (under 💰 Money).
Tap the photo button — take a picture or upload one.
Your receipt appears on the left; the extracted vendor, amount, and date fill in on the right — side by side, so you can verify every field against the photo at a glance. 👀
Pick the category and Paid from (Cash/Bank), add a description.
Hit 💾 Save expense — posted as a proper double-entry journal.

🤔 Scanner can't read it? No problem — just fill the form manually. The side-by-side photo stays visible so you can copy the numbers over.

🏦 Bank Import, Bank Rules & Reconciliation

Import Bank CSV

Download a CSV from your online banking, then click 🏦 Import Bank CSV:

Upload the CSV file — JCO Books auto-detects the format.
Each line gets a suggested category (it learns from your history + keyword rules).
Duplicates are flagged automatically — already-imported lines won't double-post.
Check the lines you want, click Import. Only checked lines post.

Bank Rules (auto-categorize)

Tired of categorizing "STARBUCKS #4821" every month? Click 🏦 Bank Rules and create rules like: if description contains "Starbucks" → Meals Expense. Future imports categorize themselves. It's like teaching JCO Books your habits! 🧠

Reconcile (prove your books match the bank)

Click 🏦 Reconcile. Enter your bank statement's ending balance and date, then check off each transaction that appears on the statement. JCO Books even suggests matches (same amount ±$0.50, date ±3 days). When everything's checked and the difference is $0.00 — 🎉 reconciled! Your books officially agree with reality.

💡 Reconcile monthly! It's the #1 habit that separates clean books from messy ones. Future tax-you says thanks.

🧾 Invoicing & Getting Paid

Create an invoice

Click 🧾 Invoices → New Invoice.
Pick the customer (or add a new one).
Add line items: description, quantity, rate. For service clients, lines credit Service Income; for merchandising, Sales Revenue.
Set the due date and any sales tax.
Save — the invoice posts to Accounts Receivable (they owe you now!).

Send it & get paid

📧 Email Invoice — send it straight from JCO Books (set up your email under ⚙️ Settings → Email first).
Record payment — open the invoice, click Record Payment, enter amount + date. Partial payments welcome!
💸 Interac e-Transfer tracking — mark an invoice as waiting for e-Transfer, then one-tap record it when the money lands. (Set your e-Transfer email in settings.)
Invoice statuses: Draft → Sent → Partially Paid → Paid (or Overdue 😅).

⏳ AR/AP Aging: Click ⏳ AR/AP Aging under Reports to see who owes you (and who you owe), bucketed by how overdue: current, 30, 60, 90+ days. Your "who do I chase first" list!

📝 Quotes & Estimates

Not ready to bill yet? Click 📝 Quotes → New Quote. Build it exactly like an invoice — line items, tax, the works. When the customer says yes, open the quote and hit Convert to Invoice. One click, zero retyping. ✨

Quotes have statuses too: Draft → Sent → Accepted / Declined / Expired.

📦 Bills & Purchase Orders

Bills (money you owe)

Got a supplier bill? Record it under Sales & Purchases → Expenses as a bill (not yet paid) — it lands in Accounts Payable. Pay it later, and JCO Books clears the payable. The AP Aging report shows everything you owe by due date.

Purchase Orders (merchandising/manufacturing)

Click 📦 Purchase Orders → New PO. List what you're ordering from the supplier.
When goods arrive, click Receive — inventory increases automatically. 📦➡️📦
The PO links to the supplier bill, so nothing gets double-counted.

🧾 Expenses & Billable Expenses

Record everyday spending under Expenses. But here's the cool part: billable expenses.

When recording an expense, tick Billable and pick the customer.
Later, when invoicing that customer, JCO Books offers to add unbilled expenses to the invoice with one click.
It never double-bills — once an expense is on an invoice, it's marked as billed. ✅

Example: you pay $40 for courier to deliver a client's package. Mark it billable → add it to their next invoice. The client reimburses you, and your books stay clean.

⏱️ Time Tracking

Bill by the hour? Click ⏱️ Time Entries:

Log hours: date, customer, hours, rate, description of work.
Entries sit as Unbilled until invoiced.
On the invoice screen, click Add unbilled time — hours become invoice lines (hours × rate) automatically.

💡 Freelancer fuel: Time tracking + billable expenses + invoicing = the complete "I did work, now pay me" pipeline. JCO Books was basically built for this. 😄

💰 Payroll

Have employees? Click 💰 Payroll (under ⚙️ Manage). JCO Books handles Canadian payroll deductions:

Add employees — name, pay rate, province, TD1 info.
Run payroll — enter hours/period. JCO Books calculates CPP, EI, and income tax automatically.
It posts the full journal: Dr Salaries Expense / Dr Employer CPP & EI Expense / Cr Cash / Cr CPP–EI–Tax Payable. The payable accounts track what you owe CRA.
Use the 💰 T4 / ROE page (Reports) for year-end: per-employee T4 box summaries and ROE-ready CSV exports. (Data prep only — actual filing happens with CRA.)

⚠️ Heads up: Payroll rules change yearly. JCO Books uses current-year tables — always double-check against CRA's official payroll calculator for your province.

🏢 Fixed Assets & Depreciation

Bought a laptop, vehicle, or oven for the business? Click 🏢 Fixed Assets:

Add the asset: name, purchase date, cost, useful life (years), and which asset account (Equipment, Vehicles, etc.).
Each month, click Depreciate — JCO Books posts Dr Depreciation Expense / Cr Accumulated Depreciation automatically (straight-line method).
A no-double-post guard stops you from depreciating the same month twice. 🛡️

Plain English: depreciation spreads a big purchase's cost across the years you actually use it — instead of one scary expense spike.

📊 Budgets vs Actuals

Click 💰 Budgets (under ⚙️ Manage) → set monthly or yearly budget amounts per expense/revenue category.
Click 📊 Budget vs Actuals (under 📊 Reports) to see budget vs reality, with variances.
Over budget? The variance column shows exactly where. No judgment. Okay, a little judgment. 😅

⚖️ Sales Tax (GST/HST/VAT)

JCO Books tracks sales tax properly — what you collected from customers vs what you paid on purchases:

When recording a purchase, there's an honest "tax paid" field — it posts Dr Expense / Dr Input Tax Credit / Cr Cash correctly.
Click ⚖️ Tax liability (Reports) for the Sales Tax Liability Report: collected vs paid, net owed, with a monthly breakdown.
🧾 Tax report summarizes everything for filing time.
The built-in Tax estimate calculator estimates income tax too.

💡 Remember: Sales tax you collect is NOT your money — you're just the government's temporary piggy bank. 🐷 The liability report shows exactly what you'll owe.

💱 Multi-Currency (CAD/USD/PHP)

Doing business across borders? JCO Books handles CAD, USD, and PHP. Record transactions in the transaction currency; reports convert using the exchange rate you set. Perfect for Filipino-Canadian businesses operating in both worlds! 🇨🇦🇵🇭

📦 Inventory (Merchandising)

For merchandising clients, click 📦 Inventory (Reports group):

Add items: name, SKU, cost, sale price, quantity on hand.
Selling auto-posts COGS — when an invoice includes an inventory item, JCO Books reduces stock and records Dr COGS / Cr Inventory instantly.
Overselling is blocked — you can't sell stock you don't have. (The app says no. Firmly. 🚫)
Low-stock alerts: set a reorder point per item; the dashboard badges items running low.
Adjust stock for counts, damage, or shrinkage — with a reason recorded.

🏭 Manufacturing & Recipes (Bakeries, Rejoice! 🍰)

For manufacturing clients, raw materials flow through three stages: Raw Materials → Work in Process → Finished Goods.

Production runs

Click 🏭 Production. Pick what you're making and how many.
JCO Books consumes the raw materials (Cr Raw Materials Inventory), accumulates cost in WIP, then moves finished goods into Finished Goods Inventory. All automatic!

Recipes

Click 🍰 Recipes → create a recipe with ingredients and quantities. JCO Books calculates the cost per unit.
New version: tweak a recipe without losing history — v1, v2, v3… old versions are read-only.
Scale: need 3× the batch? One click scales every ingredient exactly.
Record batch: log actual production runs.
📊 Yield variance: expected vs actual output — flags variances over ±10% and estimates waste cost. (Where did those 12 cupcakes GO? 🧁🔍)

🔁 Recurring Transactions

Rent every month? Same subscription? Click 🔁 Recurring (under ⚙️ Manage) → create a template (amount, category, frequency: weekly/monthly/yearly). JCO Books generates them on schedule — and the cash flow forecast uses them to predict the future. 🔮

✉️ Payment Reminders

Click ✉️ Reminders to nudge late payers:

See all overdue invoices in one place.
Send email reminders — polite templates included (firm but friendly, the JCO way 😊).
Send SMS — via the pluggable SMS provider (configure under ⚙️ Settings → SMS; SMS costs real money per message, so it's off by default).
Set your e-Transfer email in settings for one-tap payment recording.

📊 Reports

Click Reports — the payoff for all that data entry! Every report can be printed or downloaded as Excel:

Report	What it tells you (plain English)
Profit & Loss	Did I make money? Revenue minus expenses, by period.
Balance Sheet	What do I own, what do I owe, what's left for me? (Assets = Liabilities + Equity — always balances!)
Trial Balance	Every account's debits and credits. The accountant's "does it all add up?" check.
Cash Flow	Where did the cash actually go? Operating, investing, financing.
AR/AP Aging	Who owes me / who I owe, by how overdue.
Budget vs Actuals	Planned spending vs reality.
Equity Statement	How the owner's stake changed over time.
Financial Ratios	Health check numbers: current ratio, gross margin, etc. — with explanations!
📊 Charts	Pretty graphs: revenue vs expenses, profit trends, expense breakdowns.
🔮 Cash Forecast	3/6/12-month projection from recurring transactions + trends. (A projection, not a promise!)
📄 Customer Statement	Send a customer their full history: invoices, payments, balance.

🖨️ Printing? Reports have clean print styles — hit print and hand them to your accountant with pride.

🏛️ BIR Books, E-Invoicing & T4/ROE

📚 BIR Books of Accounts (Philippines)

Click 📚 BIR books for BIR-style journals: General Journal, General Ledger, Sales Journal, Purchase Journal — with date filters and print-friendly layouts. Have your accountant verify before official use.

🧾 E-Invoicing Readiness

Click 🧾 E-invoicing for a readiness status page and UBL/PEPPOL-style JSON export per invoice — forward-ready for when BIR requirements finalize. (No fake BIR API claims here — just honest readiness. ✅)

💰 T4 / ROE Data Prep (Canada)

Click 💰 T4 / ROE for per-employee yearly summaries (T4 boxes 14/16/18/22) and ROE-ready CSV exports. Clearly labeled data preparation, not CRA filing — you file with CRA's own tools.

🏪 Branches & Multi-Branch

Multiple locations? Click 🏪 Branches → add each branch. Tag transactions per branch, then open Branch Reports for per-branch P&L and Balance Sheet — plus a combined view that's the exact sum of all branches. 🧮

👥 Staff Roles & Approvals

Staff roles

Click 👥 Staff (owner only) to add team logins with roles:

Role	Can do
Owner	Everything. The boss. 👑
Accountant	Everything except staff management.
Data Entry	Record transactions, submit for approval. Can't post directly to sensitive areas.
Viewer	Look but don't touch. Sees reports, can't change anything. 👀

Approval workflows

Staff submit transactions via ✅ Approvals → Submit. The bookkeeper approves (posts a balanced journal) or rejects with a reason (never posts). Nothing hits the real books until approved — the "trust but verify" system! 🛡️

📥 Review submissions: Client-submitted receipts also land in a review queue first — the bookkeeper approves, edits, or rejects before anything touches the ledger. (This is the feature that stops "flour recorded as income" disasters! 😄)

👋 Client Portal

Give clients their own login so they can help without breaking things:

On the client page, scroll to 🔑 Client portal login → create a username + password for them.
Clients log in at Client Login and see only their business.

✅ Clients CAN	🚫 Clients CANNOT
Submit receipts & documents	See journal entries or the general ledger
View & download their invoices	Edit transactions
See financial reports & charts	See other clients (obviously!)
Download Excel/PDF reports	Run payroll or close books

💡 The golden rule: clients submit, bookkeepers approve. Everything a client submits waits in the review queue first!

🧾 Personal Tax Helper (Canada)

Not just for businesses! Click 🧾 Personal Tax in the top menu — a helper for employees doing their personal taxes:

Slip tracker: log T4, T4A, T5, T3, T2202, T4E slips — mark each as received or missing.
Income summary: totals across multiple T4s (hello, multi-job life! 💼💼).
Deductions tracker: RRSP, union dues, T2200 employment expenses, childcare, moving.
Credits tracker: medical expenses, donations, tuition, disability credits.
Tax estimate: step-by-step estimate using real federal + provincial brackets.
Filing checklist: don't miss the April 30 deadline! Plus NETFILE-ready CSV export.
Helpful links: "File with TurboTax Canada" and BIR eBIRForms links where relevant (external, clearly labeled).

⚠️ Not a substitute for a tax pro — it's a helper for organizing and estimating. Ontario brackets built in; other provinces coming.

🗂️ Document Vault & Audit Package

Document Vault

Click 🗂️ Document vault (under ⚙️ Manage) — attach files to transactions or clients: contracts, receipts, CRA letters. Everything in one place, no more shoebox! 👞📦

Audit Package (one click!)

Click 📦 Audit package (under 📊 Reports) → download a ZIP containing journals, ledgers, statements, and an index README. Hand it to your accountant or auditor and watch them smile. 😊

🛠️ Power Tools

🔁 Find & Recode (bulk fix mistakes)

Categorized 50 transactions wrong? Don't fix them one by one! Click 🔁 Find & recode: search → check the boxes → preview → apply. Closed years are protected. 🛡️

📥 Migrate from QuickBooks/Xero

Click 📥 Migrate (top menu): upload your QuickBooks/Xero chart-of-accounts CSV → auto-detect format → map accounts in a preview → creates the client with your mapped chart. Only balanced journals import; problem rows are reported, not silently dropped. (Not affiliated with Intuit or Xero — just a friendly moving truck! 🚚)

🤖 Smart Categorization

JCO Books learns from your own history — when you record transactions, it suggests categories based on your past choices. Suggestions never auto-apply; you always confirm. Your data trains your assistant!

🗣️ Voice Entry

On supported browsers (Chrome), click the 🎤 microphone on transaction forms and say the entry — "Office supplies, forty-five dollars, Staples." It fills the draft fields; you review and save. (Nothing is uploaded — speech stays on your device.)

🚗 Mileage Tracking

Click Mileage: log business trips (date, km, purpose). Uses official CRA 2026 rates ($0.73/km first 5,000 km, $0.67 after). One click converts a trip to a vehicle expense. 🚗💨

💾 Backup

Click 💾 Backup (under ⚙️ Manage) to download a full database backup. Do this regularly — it's your safety net! (PythonAnywhere free tier: also click "Run until 1 month from today" periodically so your app doesn't expire!)

🛡️ Backup, Audit Log & Safety

📋 Audit log (⚙️ Manage) — every login, change, and deletion, timestamped. If something looks off, the trail is here. 🔍
🔒 Close Books (⚙️ Manage) — at year-end, zeroes revenue, expenses, and drawings into capital. Can't be undone — double-check first, then celebrate the fresh year! 🎉
Login protection: 5 wrong tries = 15-minute lockout. Sessions expire after 60 idle minutes.
CSRF tokens on every form, secure cookies, security headers — the nerdy stuff that keeps bad actors out. 🤓

⚙️ Settings

📧 Email settings (/settings/email): configure SMTP so JCO Books can email invoices and reminders. (Uses your own email account — JCO never sees your password; it's stored securely.)
📱 SMS settings (/settings/sms): plug in an SMS provider for text reminders. Off by default — SMS costs real money per message! 💸
🌐 Language: toggle EN/TL anytime from the top menu. (Taglish mode — para sa ating mga kababayan! 🇵🇭)

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is JCO Books really free?

For JCO's bookkeeping clients, yes — it's included at no extra cost. JCO earns from bookkeeping services, not software subscriptions. (That's the "trust first, money later" philosophy! 💛)

Can my clients see my other clients' data?

Absolutely not. Client logins are strictly isolated — each client sees only their own business. This is enforced in the code and tested (unauthorized access returns a 403 error).

What if I mess up a transaction?

Click the ✏️ Edit button on any transaction (bookkeeper view). The journals update automatically. For bulk mistakes, use 🔁 Find & recode. And every page has a ← Back arrow. Mistakes are fixable — that's the point! 😊

Does JCO Books file my taxes with CRA/BIR?

No — and that's honest. JCO Books prepares everything (reports, T4 data, BIR books, e-invoice exports) but filing happens through official channels (NETFILE, eBIRForms, TurboTax links provided). It's "tax-ready," not "auto-filing."

Is it CRA-certified or BIR-accredited?

No. JCO Books is a bookkeeping system, not a government-certified filing tool. It prepares BIR-compliant books and CRA-ready data, but always have your accountant verify before official use.

Can I use it on my phone?

Yes! It's mobile-responsive and even installable as a PWA (Progressive Web App) — add it to your home screen from your phone's browser for an app-like experience. 📱

What happens to my data?

Your data stays yours. Back it up anytime via 💾 Backup. JCO Books doesn't sell data or show ads — it's a tool, not a trap. 🛡️

How do I get certified on JCO Books?

Click 🏆 Get Certified in the top menu — it opens the free JCO Bookkeeping Self-Assessment on jcobookkeepingfirm.com. Test your knowledge, print your completion certificate! 🎓

Who do I contact for help?

JCO Bookkeeping Firm — through the website contact form at jcobookkeepingfirm.com. Real humans, real help! 💛

📖 Glossary (Accounting Words, Translated to Human)

Word	What it actually means
Debit / Credit	Left side / right side of a journal entry. NOT "good" and "bad"! Whether a debit increases an account depends on the account type.
Journal entry	A single record of a transaction touching 2+ accounts. The atom of accounting. ⚛️
Double-entry	Every transaction hits at least two accounts, debits = credits. The 500-year-old system that keeps books honest.
Chart of accounts	The master list of all "buckets" (accounts) a business uses.
Trial balance	A list of every account's balance, proving debits = credits. If it doesn't balance, something's wrong!
Accounts Receivable (AR)	Money customers owe YOU.
Accounts Payable (AP)	Money YOU owe suppliers.
COGS	Cost of Goods Sold — what the stuff you sold cost you.
Accrual	Recording income/expenses when earned/incurred, not when cash moves. (JCO Books is accrual-based!)
Reconciliation	Proving your books match the bank statement. Monthly habit of champions. 🏆
Depreciation	Spreading a big asset's cost over its useful life, a little each month.
Contra account	An account that reduces its parent — e.g. Accumulated Depreciation reduces Equipment.
Equity	What's left for the owner after debts: Assets − Liabilities.
Drawings	Owner taking money out for personal use. (Not an expense — it reduces equity directly!)
Fiscal year-end	When you "close the books" and start fresh. Revenue/expense buckets reset to zero.

🎓 You've finished the guide! You're now more dangerous than 90% of spreadsheet bookkeepers. Go forth and balance! And remember — when in doubt, debits = credits, and JCO's got your back. 💛

A question about your books?

Ask JCO — the free guide on our home page sorts out deadlines, expenses, sales tax, payroll, and setting up your books, one step at a time.

Ask JCO →