Introduction

Before you can use your installed/updated company there are some important settings you have to enter to tell FrontAccounting how to act.

  1. Enter Setup tab, System and General GL Setup.
    • Set the correct Accounts for Retained Earnings, Profit/Loss Year, Bank Charge and all the other default Accounts.
      If you want to add more accounts, go to Banking and General Ledger, GL Accounts and create the missing accounts.
    • Check that the other values are correctly set.
  2. Enter Setup tab, Company Setup.
    • If this is your own company, change to relevant data.
    • If you need to track costs by cost centre/department or by project Setup the Dimensions to allow you to do this.
    • If you want Automatic Price Calculation from Standard Cost, add a percent to add and eventually round to the nearest XX Cent. Also check that Base for Auto Price calculations is set.
  3. Enter Setup tab, Access Setup.
    • Check all the roles and change as you please. The roles have been converted from the former Access Roles and may need some changes.
  4. Enter Setup tab, Fiscal Years.
    • Check that you have the correct fiscal year entered. If not, create the fiscal year and go into Company Setup and select this new fiscal year.
  5. Enter Setup tab, Points of Sales.
    • Enter at least one Points of Sales. If you haven't setup a Cash Account, go into Banking and General Ledger tab, Bank Accounts and create a cash account. Go back to Points of Sales and fill out the rest.
  6. Before starting with sales orders, invoices etc, you must first configure Tax system configuration and enter some data:
  7. To start using FA in the place of existing packages, begin with one fiscal year back and on it's last day make a complete (Journal) Voucher (Journal Entry Form) with all opening balances and they must tally correctly when that fiscal year is closed and the new fiscal year is created and opened for current year transactions. Such entries would include:
    • Supplier / Customer balances
    • Stock balances - enter the stock item levels in the Inventory module - if you are doing this before you enter item prices, the entries will not create any GL transactions - the GL open balance must include the Inventory balance.
    • Bank and Cash Balances
    • Other relevant entries in the Opening Balance Sheet - now create the correct new fiscal year, change to this year in the Company Setup, and continue from here.
  8. If the fiscal year needs to be different from the standard one in the Chart of Accounts SQL, it needs to be edited in phpMyAdmin or other MySQL client and if any exchange rates are available their effective dates too will have to be edited in such a way as currently the FA Exchange Rate Page does not allow editing the date whilst it allows choosing one for a new exchange rate. No checks are made for dates earlier than the earliest existing one for exchange rates.
  9. Enter Setup tab, Display Setup.
    • The various date display and other parameters can be set to suit the user.
  10. Explore The Features and Functionality Available. There are a lot of hidden features within FA and a browse though the Wiki will disclose them.
    • Recurring Invoices can be set up and generated for recurring sales.
    • Quick Entries are use to facilitate the entry of repetative transactions by pre-populating the transaction screen.

Tips and Tricks

Several Forum Posts discuss the setting up of a new FA Install and managing extensions and modifications. The list here, though not exhaustive, will be a nice place to start.