Daily bookkeeping flow

Bookkeeping is rhythm work. The discipline is consistency: small amounts done daily beat large amounts done occasionally, every time. This guide describes the typical daily flow — what you actually do, in roughly the order you'd do it.

The exact pattern varies by business. Use this as a starting point and adjust to what fits your operation.

Opening the file

Open Solid Accounting. The welcome screen lists recent files; pick the one you're working in. Enter the file's password.

The first thing the dashboard shows: any notifications since you last opened. Common ones:

• Recurring transactions that generated overnight (auto-posted) — review the new entries
• Unmatched bank-feed transactions — the review queue waiting for your attention
• Failed Cloud Backup runs (rare, but visible immediately)
• Pending estimates that expired (need to be re-quoted or marked rejected)

Clear any notifications before moving to the day's work. The notifications panel is the first-pass triage.

What's coming in (revenue side)

Most days start with reviewing what came in:

Bank feed sync

If you've configured Bank Feeds, new transactions appear in the review queue. For each:

• Customer payment — match it to the open invoice it pays. The match is usually obvious (same customer name, same amount); confirm and Solid posts a Receive Payment clearing the invoice.
• Direct deposit / interest — categorize to the right income account; create a Deposit entry.
• Refund or adjustment — usually matches an existing entry; categorize the offset.

Aim to clear the bank-feed queue completely each day. Letting it accumulate makes matching harder (memory of "what was this?" fades).

Manual customer payments

If you got checks in the mail or on-site cash payments:

1. Receive Payment — pick the customer and the invoice(s) the payment applies to
2. Choose: post directly to the bank account (if you're depositing same-day) or to Undeposited Funds (if batching)
3. If batching: at end of day, run Make Deposit to move the day's stack from Undeposited Funds to the bank, matching what you actually deposited at the bank

Sales for cash businesses

If you ring up sales without invoices (retail, food service, etc.), post a Sales Receipt daily. The single-entry shape: DR Bank or Undeposited Funds / CR Sales Revenue (per item or category).

For high-volume retail, most users post a single Daily Sales entry summarizing all the day's sales rather than one per transaction. The point-of-sale system has the per-transaction detail; Solid just needs the daily total.

What's going out (expense side)

New bills received

Vendor invoices arrive throughout the day — email, mail, the AP inbox, scanned receipts.

For each:

1. Bill — pick the vendor, fill date, due date, line items with the appropriate expense accounts
2. Attach the PDF/image of the invoice (drag and drop)
3. Post

The bill sits in AP, unpaid, until you pay it. Don't pay-and-bill at the same time unless the bill is being paid the day it arrives — splitting them keeps the cash-out and the expense-recognition timed correctly (especially if your basis is accrual).

Checks written today

For each check you wrote (or will write today):

1. New Check — pick the bank account, the payee (vendor), the date
2. Line items with expense accounts and amounts
3. Reference number = check number (Solid auto-fills the next from the configured sequence)
4. Print or save the entry

If the check is paying an existing bill, use Pay Bill instead — it clears the AP balance through payment_applications rather than posting a separate Check that doesn't reconcile against the bill.

Credit-card spending

Either: post each transaction as the receipt arrives (DR expense / CR Credit Card liability), or import the credit-card statement at month-end and post in batch. Most small businesses do both — small daily charges via bank feed, monthly statement reconciliation to catch anything missed.

Recurring transactions

If you have non-auto-post recurring entries due, they're in the Recurring Due queue. Review and post each — utility bills are the canonical example (the amount varies; the structure doesn't).

Periodic checks

A few things you don't do every day but do often enough:

AR review (weekly)

Run AR Aging. Anything in the 31-60 days bucket gets a friendly reminder; anything in 61-90 or beyond gets a phone call. Don't let receivables get older than 60 days without active follow-up.

AP review (weekly, before paying bills)

Run AP Aging. Pay bills due this week; flag bills with payment terms expiring soon for next week's run. The cleanest pattern: a single Pay Bills run weekly, generating one Pay Bill entry per check, matched against the bills it clears.

Cash position (daily, briefly)

Click Operating Checking in the sidebar. Glance at the running balance and the day's transactions. This is the 30-second daily check — does anything look off, are big payments scheduled correctly, etc.

Cloud Backup status (passive)

The Cloud Backup status indicator in the status bar shows green if backups are running on schedule. If it's amber or red, investigate before you do anything else — losing a day's work because backups failed is the worst kind of avoidable loss.

End-of-day check

Before closing the file:

1. Bank feed queue — empty? Any uncleared items, address before closing.
2. Notifications — cleared? Any failed recurring posts, address.
3. Today's entries — quick scroll through Reports → GL Detail → today to confirm everything posted correctly. Look for unusual amounts, wrong accounts, missed dates.
4. Trial balance — Reports → Trial Balance → today. Total debits = total credits (always). The columns being equal confirms the file is intact.

Close the file. Solid auto-saves continuously, so closing is just exiting the app.

When something doesn't fit the rhythm

Some days are weird. A surprise audit. A vendor with messed-up paperwork. A returned check. A duplicate import.

For one-off transactions that don't fit a standard transaction type, post a manual journal entry. The model is the same as everything else (DR/CR balanced lines), the workflow is just New Journal Entry instead of New Check / Bill / Invoice. The entry's transaction_type = 'journal_entry'; it shows up in reports the same way.

Document the why in the memo field — manual JEs are the entries you'll most need to explain six months later.

Patterns by business type

A common antipattern

The most common bookkeeping antipattern: letting transactions pile up for weeks, then doing them all at once. The cost:

• You forget context (what was that $80 charge for again?)
• Errors slip through unnoticed because the volume is too high to sanity-check
• AR ages unnoticed; collections get harder
• AP bills go past due, damaging vendor relationships
• The trial balance might be off by something small but you can't tell which day's batch caused it

Daily 20-minute sessions beat weekly 4-hour catch-ups, every time. The discipline pays off in error-free books and timely reports.

Cross-references

• Banking → Bank Feeds — the daily bank-feed review flow
• Accounts Receivable — invoicing, payments, statements
• Accounts Payable — bills, pay bill, vendor credits
• Period Close walkthrough — the month/quarter/year close discipline this rhythm supports