Getting Started
When you start the app for the first time, it prompts you to create the accounts for your business. Easy Books can manage the accounts for many businesses, and you can always create more businesses later.
Example Businesses
There are some example businesses available, already pre-filled with data. You can use these to evaluate the app, produce the financial reports and see if you like using it.
* Buy & Sell is a business that buys and sells stock items. There is one purchase followed by a couple of sales. The stock sold is later devalued manually by moving the average cost per item as a cost of sales.
* IT Contractor is a simple contracting business with one worker. There are some entries in the Time Tracker that were later billed to a customer, and the payment was received from the customer about a week later. The example shows the separation between the date of the sale and the use of customer accounts to handle the later payment.
* Demosys is a company with a lot of entries. Note that this business contains about 85 transactions, and will count against your limit of 120 transactions. So when you've finished using it, remember to delete the demo business to make space. The business features supplier and customer accounts, VAT entries (some already consolidated), reconciled bank statements and some example time entries on the Time Tracker.
Template Businesses
To make it easy to create the list of accounts for your own business, there are a number of pre-defined templates defined in the app:
* Bare Bones
* Sole Trader
* Company
* Personal Accounts
Select Bare Bones if you want only the bare minimum of accounts created. This creates a bank account and the various VAT accounts.
Note: The VAT accounts are hidden from view unless you turn on VAT, by changing the settings for the business.
Also Note: You cannot change the template type after you have started using it, e.g. from Personal to Business. Some of the functionality will not be possible.
Company is the best choice if you are creating a set of accounts for a small business. It includes a typical set of expense and income accounts, a couple of bank accounts, petty cash and a credit card.
Note: Don't worry if the template doesn't give you all the accounts you need; you can easily add any missing accounts. For example, if you use more than one credit card just add a new credit card account as needed. Likewise, you can remove any accounts you won't need.
Once you have created a set of accounts from a template, the main screen is displayed.
If you already use the Online Sync service, you can choose to create your business as a copy of that stored online. To do this you will need your username and password that you use to access the service. Then you will see your available businesses that you can download to your Mac. Once downloaded, any changes you make are kept in-sync with your other Macs, iPhones and iPads.
Creating Another Business
If you want to create more businesses, just do the following:
Tap on the business selector on the main screen. Choose the menu option Add a business....
Later you can switch between your businesses by tapping on the business selector again.
When you add a new business to Easy Books, you can again select from a built-in template. You can also choose to use an existing business as a template for your new one. The name of the business is generated automatically.
Deleting Businesses
To delete a business, select it first, then tap on Business Settings in the navigation panel. Click the button marked Delete Business. All data associated with the business, such as transactions, invoices and time entries will be deleted permanently.