By the time you start using this system your business already exists. There is money in the bank, maybe stock on the shelf, maybe a loan being repaid. The books have to open from the truth, not from zero. Opening balances are the handful of entries that say what the business had on day one. You write them once, under Journal Entries, dated the day before you start recording day-to-day work — usually 30 June, so the new year opens clean. Choose the entry type "opening" so they are never confused with trading.

Because where the money came from decides what the business owes, and what you can be taxed on. MK 1,000,000 of your own savings, MK 1,000,000 from the bank and a MK 1,000,000 grant all look identical on a bank statement and are three completely different things in the books. Record a loan as your own capital and your balance sheet hides a debt you still have to repay. Record your own money as income and you pay tax on it.

This is the whole of day one, followed through on a real business. Chisomo is opening a tailoring shop in Zomba. She has MK 800,000 of her own savings and her uncle has lent her MK 300,000 that she must pay back. Before opening the door she buys two sewing machines for MK 250,000 and fabric and thread for MK 180,000, and puts MK 200,000 in the till, leaving MK 470,000 in the bank. Nothing has been sold yet — and that is exactly the moment to open the books.

Almost every business starts the same way: some of your own money, often some borrowed money, and some of it already spent on things you need before you can trade. If you open the books with only "money in the bank" you have thrown away half the picture — the debt you owe your uncle, the machines you own, and the fabric sitting on the shelf. Twenty minutes on day one saves a year of guessing.

Every company here opens with the same chart of accounts, but no business uses all of it. A hardware shop in Limbe and a consultant in Lilongwe touch completely different parts of the same list, and both of them are right. This is how to tell which parts are yours, and which you can ignore for good.

Because accounts you do not need make every report noisy, and accounts you do need make the reports wrong when they are missing. A service business has no cost of sales — force rent and salaries into it and your gross margin means nothing. A shop that never records stock cannot tell you what it is really making on a sale. Ten minutes deciding this saves you from reports you do not trust.

Every amount you record has to land somewhere. The chart of accounts is the list of those somewheres — Bank Account, Sales Revenue, Rent Expense, VAT Payable and so on. It is set up for you when you create a company, following what MRA expects to see.

Sorting into the right pot is what turns a pile of transactions into a report. Put fuel into "Motor Vehicle Expenses" every time and you can answer "what am I spending on transport?" in one click. Put it somewhere different each time and you cannot.

Every transaction is written twice — once as a debit and once as a credit — and the two must be equal. That is double entry. It sounds like extra work, but it is what makes the books check themselves: if the two sides do not agree, something is wrong and you can see it immediately.

Invoices, bills and payments already write these entries for you. You would write one by hand for the things that are not a sale or a purchase: putting your own money in, recording depreciation, or correcting a mistake.

Two questions decide every entry ever written. What did the business GET? That account is debited. Where did it COME FROM — what was given up, or who was it taken from? That account is credited. Value always moves from somewhere to somewhere, the two sides are the same amount, and that is the whole of double entry. Nothing more is hiding behind the word.

Invoices, bills, payments and daily sales already write both sides for you, so you will never type most of what is below. You need it for the entries you do write by hand — opening balances, putting your own money in, depreciation, a correction — and, more often, for reading. When a report moves and you want to know why, this is how you work backwards to the entry that moved it.

An invoice is for a customer who will pay you later, and it needs their name. A shop that took MK 45,000 over the counter has no name to put on anything. This screen records the day's takings in one line, with no customer involved.

Record it daily and you know what a Tuesday is worth, what a month is worth, and how much of the VAT sitting in your till belongs to MRA. Leave it and you are guessing at both.

An invoice is a demand for payment: what you supplied, what it costs, and when you expect the money. Raising one records the sale and records that the customer owes you. The money itself arrives later, and you record that separately as a payment.

The gap between "invoiced" and "paid" is where small businesses get hurt. Recording invoices properly is what lets the system tell you who owes you, how much, and how long they have been sitting on it.

A bill is an invoice pointed the other way: a supplier has delivered and expects to be paid. Recording it books the cost now, even though the money leaves later.

Recording bills as they arrive is how you know what is coming. A bank balance that looks healthy is not healthy if MK 2,000,000 of supplier bills fall due next week.

When you record a bill, each line asks which account the cost belongs to. That choice is the whole point of recording it: it decides which line of which report the money shows up on. The same MK 300,000 is a cost of sales, an overhead or an asset depending only on what you tell it.

Consistency is worth more than perfection. Fuel coded to the same account every time answers "what am I spending on transport?" in one click. Fuel coded three different ways answers nothing. And the split between costs that move with sales and costs that do not is what makes gross margin, break-even and "can I afford this?" work at all.

A payment settles an invoice or a bill. Recording it is what moves the amount out of "owed" and into your bank or cash. Until you record it, the system still thinks you are waiting for the money.

This is where the cash side of the business becomes real. Every payment screen shows the whole sum before you commit: the document total, how much is VAT, what is being settled, any tax withheld and its basis, and the cash that will actually move.

Each report answers one question. Reading the wrong one for the question you have is how people conclude a profitable business is failing, or a failing one is fine.

Look at them monthly, in this order: did I make money, can I pay what falls due, and does everything add up.

Four taxes touch most small businesses in Malawi. Three of them are money you are holding on somebody else's behalf, which is why falling behind is so painful — you are spending money that was never yours.

The rates here are the current published ones, but they change with the national budget. Every rate and every PAYE band is yours to edit under Tax Settings — do not assume the figures shipped with the system are still right.

At the end of a financial year the income and expense accounts are emptied back to nil so the new year starts from nothing, and the profit is moved into Retained Earnings — the pile of profit the business has kept since it started. Then the year is locked.

Without closing, this year's sales sit on top of last year's forever and you can never say what a single year earned. Locking matters just as much: once you have filed with MRA, nothing should quietly change behind that filing.

Type a question the way you would ask a bookkeeper and it answers from your own posted entries. It does not send your books anywhere — the whole thing runs on this server.

It is the fastest way to get an answer without knowing which report to open, and it will explain the terms it uses if you ask.

A company holds its own chart of accounts, its own ledger and its own tax settings. If you run more than one business, each gets its own company and they never mix.

Two settings are worth getting right on day one: whether you are VAT registered, and the month your financial year starts. Both change how every later figure is calculated.