The first time you open this file, create an account with your email and a password. If you're the first person from your company, you'll be asked to create the business — everyone you invite afterward lands in the same shared books automatically. If a teammate already invited you, just sign up with the same email they used and you'll be linked in.

Go to Settings. Fill in business name, address, contact info, and bank details — these appear on every printed invoice. Choose your currency for how amounts are displayed, and separately your tax jurisdiction (the country you actually file taxes in) — this drives your Tax ID label (TIN, ABN, GSTIN, EIN, etc.), available tax types (VAT/GST/Sales Tax), default tax rate, and WHT options. The two are independent on purpose: a Philippines business invoicing a client in USD still files under BIR/VAT rules, not US rules.

In Settings, pick Accrual (income/expense recorded when invoiced/billed) or Cash (recorded when paid). Pick your tax type pill (VAT/GST/Sales Tax/None) — only types relevant to your country will show. Set the standard rate.

Settings → Chart of Accounts comes pre-loaded with standard accounts (Cash, A/R, A/P, Revenue, COGS, etc.). Add custom accounts with a code and type. Each row is clickable — opens a full schedule of every transaction posted to that account. Invite teammates under Settings → Users & access by email and role — they set their own password when they sign up, and immediately see the same live books from any computer.

Transactions — quick income/expense entries with optional WHT and attachments. Invoices — itemized billing with per-line Goods/Services type (which determines applicable WHT options) and per-line WHT rates; click "+ New" next to the client field to add a customer on the fly, and pick or quick-add a Category. Bills — same per-line Goods/Services + WHT structure, plus its own quick-add Category, for supplier expenses. Every transaction, paid invoice, and paid bill automatically posts a balanced journal entry.

Acknowledgement Receipts — issue a receipt for cash/payment received from a customer, e.g. a downpayment or deposit before anything's delivered or invoiced. Saving one immediately posts Dr the account it was deposited to / Cr Advances from Clients or Suppliers (a liability, not revenue — the cash isn't earned yet). Voiding a receipt posts a reversing entry rather than deleting history; Delete removes the receipt and its ledger entries entirely. When the actual invoice is later created, apply the advance manually against it.

Add products in Inventory with a sell price and stock quantity. In Point of Sale, tap products to build a cart, apply discounts, choose payment method, and process the sale. This automatically: deducts stock, posts an income transaction, creates Cash/Revenue/Tax journal entries, and posts a COGS entry if the product has a cost price.

Check Financial Reports using Yearly, Monthly, Weekly, or Custom date range filters. Click any month row, account name, or category to drill into the underlying transactions. Every report, schedule, and module list has a Excel export button. Your data is saved automatically to the cloud as you work, but it's still good practice to click Backup in the top bar occasionally and keep a copy somewhere safe.

Each person has their own email + password account. The first person creates the business; everyone after that either gets invited (see below) or signs up and is linked automatically if their email was already invited. Forgot your password? Use Forgot password? on the sign-in screen — you'll get an email link to set a new one. No one, including other Admins, can see or reset your password for you.

In Settings → Users & access, enter a name, email, and role, then click + Invite. They sign up with that exact email (whenever they're ready) and are dropped straight into your shared business — same invoices, same books, live. You can disable a user without deleting them, remove them entirely, or change their role at any time from the same list.

Go to Settings → Roles & permissions. Add a role (e.g. "Cashier," "Bookkeeper") and tick View / Edit / Delete checkboxes per module. View shows the module in the sidebar. Edit allows creating or updating records. Delete allows void/delete actions. Dashboard is always visible to every role as a safe landing page. The built-in Admin role always has full access to every module and can't be restricted.

The person who creates a business, and anyone invited with the Admin role, can invite or remove teammates and rename the business at the account level. This is separate from the View/Edit/Delete role permissions above, which only control what's visible and editable inside the app once someone is already signed in.

Tax jurisdiction can be changed later in Settings if you need to. Industry cannot — it's locked in at creation because it seeds specific Chart of Accounts entries and reports; changing it later on a business with real transactions could orphan historical data. If you picked the wrong industry for a brand-new business with no real transactions yet, the simplest fix is to create the business again with the correct industry and remove the old one.

No. It records cash received in advance as a liability (Advances from Clients or Suppliers), not revenue — nothing's been delivered or invoiced yet. It shows up on the Balance Sheet, not the P&L. When you later create the real Invoice for that customer, apply the advance against it manually (e.g. a journal entry moving it from Advances into Accounts Receivable/Revenue) — ArtisBooks doesn't do that step automatically.

These only appear for businesses created with a matching industry (Manufacturing; Trading/Merchandising or Retail; Services, respectively). If you didn't pick an industry, or picked one without a dedicated report (Renewable energy, General/Other), your Reports sidebar shows the standard 10 reports only — nothing is missing or broken.

Each currency maps to a country profile (e.g. PHP → Philippines/TIN, AUD → Australia/ABN). This updates the Tax ID label and placeholder across Settings, Customers, and Suppliers automatically.

VAT/GST is sales tax you collect and remit, where collected minus paid nets to one payable figure. WHT (withholding tax) works differently and is never netted: EWTC (Expanded Withholding Tax Credit, from sales, where customers withheld from you) reduces your income tax due; EWTP (Expanded Withholding Tax Payable, from expenses, where you withheld from suppliers) is a separate liability you remit to the tax authority on the supplier's behalf. They're tracked as two independent schedules, not one net number.

You need internet to sign in and to sync changes between devices — that's how everyone stays on the same books. If you briefly lose connection after signing in, the app keeps working from its local cache and syncs your changes once you're back online. The "Fetch live rates" button in Multi-Currency always needs internet, same as before.

Click any transaction, invoice, or bill row to open its detail view. Use Edit to fix details, Void to cancel with a reason (keeps an audit trail), Copy to duplicate, or Delete to remove entirely.

Yes. Open the invoice or bill's detail view — once it's marked Paid, you'll see a "Paid on" line with an edit link next to it. This is useful when something was recorded late but was actually paid in cash on the invoice date; correcting it also updates the linked ledger transaction and journal entry so reports stay accurate.

This is fixed now — tax-inclusive invoices and bills post their tax-exclusive base amount plus tax separately to the ledger, so a ₱7,000 tax-inclusive invoice shows as ₱7,000 everywhere, not ₱7,750. If you're on an older copy of this file that still shows this, replace it with your latest one.

Yes — next to the Category field on both the Invoice and Bills/Expenses forms, click "+ New" to add a category on the spot. It's saved for your business and shows up in that dropdown from then on, alongside the built-in categories.

Adding a product with an opening stock quantity now posts its value to the ledger automatically (Dr Inventory / Cr Owner Equity), the same way adding a PP&E asset does — so it shows up on the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance right away. Selling a SKU-linked item on an Invoice also now automatically deducts stock and posts Cost of Goods Sold (Dr COGS / Cr Inventory) the moment you save the invoice — you no longer need to click the line's "Deduct" button by hand (it's still there as a manual override if you ever need it). If you have invoices saved before this fix that still show unapplied stock, go to Settings → Invoice settings and click "Catch up inventory & COGS on existing invoices" — it finds and fixes them, dated as each invoice's own date so past-period reports stay accurate.

Not necessarily. This message means the app double-checked before saving and found the data had moved on since it last looked — usually just two of your own actions saving in quick succession, occasionally a teammate's edit or another tab. Either way nothing is lost: the app refreshes to the latest version automatically, and you can redo whatever you were doing.

The Audit Trail provides a sequenced, timestamped, clickable log of every entry. Combined with the auto-posted Journal Entries and exportable schedules, it covers most SME audit documentation needs.