Finance

Overview

The Finance area handles your organization’s core financial operations: billing customers, managing supplier relationships, and processing purchases. It is not a full accounting system, but covers the transactional layer that connects to your products and services.

For a Pet Rescue or Animal Shelter, the overview is titled Funding & stewardship. It emphasizes donations, grants, sponsorship pledges, overdue commitments, animal-care bills, and cash available for care. Record contribution is the primary entry point, with donation, grant, sponsorship, and other contribution contexts. The underlying finance records, controls, and permissions remain canonical; the archetype changes the operator vocabulary, not the accounting truth. Foreground totals therefore count contributions and commitments, and recent records identify the supporter or funder; the internal invoice record type remains available only as accounting detail. The setup prompt and Finance Specialist summary use the same funding, stewardship, cash-position, and reporting language instead of assuming a commercial invoicing or tax-remittance workflow.

flowchart TB
    event["Confirm the external business event"] --> source["Create the right source record<br/>Invoice, purchase order and bill, or expense claim"]
    source --> approval["Complete validation and approval<br/>where the workflow requires it"]
    approval --> movement["Receive or pay money<br/>through the external financial channel"]
    movement --> payment["Record the payment or reimbursement in DPF"]
    payment --> import["Import bank statement"]
    import --> reconcile["Match and reconcile"]
    reconcile --> reports["Review reports and open items"]
    reports --> close["Close-readiness review"]

    classDef source fill:#dbeafe,stroke:#2563eb,color:#172554
    classDef governed fill:#fff7ed,stroke:#ea580c,color:#431407
    classDef evidence fill:#ecfdf5,stroke:#059669,color:#052e16
    class event,source source
    class approval governed
    class movement,payment,import,reconcile,reports,close evidence

Text alternative: confirm the external event, create the right source record, complete any required validation or approval, move money through the external financial channel, and record the payment or reimbursement in DPF. Then import bank activity, reconcile it, review reports and open items, and complete a close-readiness review. The source record is an invoice for a receivable, a purchase order and bill for a payable, or a claim for an employee expense.

Key Concepts

What You Can Do

Burn, Revenue, and Runway

The finance overview carries a money-health row: Monthly Burn, Monthly Revenue, Runway, and Money Health. These are computed from what is actually recorded — paid bills and expenses over the trailing 90 days plus known supplier-contract commitments for burn, paid invoices for revenue, and bank balances for runway.

When nothing is recorded, the cards say Unknown or Not recorded and link to the place to record it. An empty book is never shown as a healthy $0.00, and “all up to date” appears only when there are real invoices to be up to date on. When money is going out with no revenue recorded, Money Health flags Pre-revenue so a shrinking cash position is said plainly. The Finance Controller coworker reviews the same state on a schedule and tells you what to record or watch.

Before You Record Money Movement

Choose The Workflow

Owner-first overview (food & hospitality)

For restaurants, bakeries, and caterers (the food-hospitality archetype), the /finance overview opens with “what money needs attention today?” instead of an accountant-shaped dashboard, and the money jobs it shows are matched to your specific business.

Restaurant

Catering

Bakery

A food-hospitality business that isn’t one of those three sees a neutral food/drink set of the same jobs.

Accounting internals — VAT/tax remittance, dunning reminders, payment runs, ledger and P&L reports, bank rules, and AI spend — are kept one tap away under a collapsed “Accounting & admin” section. Every other business type keeps the standard finance overview.

Readiness notes

Draft readiness note asks the Finance Specialist coworker to write up the position shown on the overview: 3–5 bullets covering what needs attention, why it matters, and the safest next action. The note is drafted from the figures on screen — the coworker is instructed not to invent numbers, and to omit anything it has no figure for.

It is a draft for you to review. Nothing is sent to anyone, no action is taken on your behalf, and the note will not claim money has been paid or moved — recording a payment in DPF is not a bank transfer. If your finances aren’t set up yet, the note explains what to set up first instead.

Recording a payment run

A payment run (/finance/payment-runs) records the selected approved bills as paid in DPF and writes a matching outbound payment. It is not a draft and does not initiate a real bank transfer — pay your suppliers through your bank as usual, then use a payment run to keep your books settled. The action is labelled “Record as Paid” to make this explicit.

Mileage

If you drive for work, the mobile app can record your drives so you do not keep a paper log. Drives show up at /finance/mileage.

Turn it on first. The app asks before it records anything. Nothing is captured until you agree, and you can turn it off at any time. Personal drives stay yours — only the ones you mark business are ever claimed.

Sort each drive. Every drive is business, personal, or commute. Tap once to choose. You can change your mind until the drive is claimed.

What you are owed. A drive is priced at the rate in force on the day you drove it, not today’s rate. A drive that has not been priced yet says so, rather than showing zero — no amount yet is not the same as nothing owed.

Driving abroad. Your phone knows which country it is in, so you are never asked to pick one. If your company has set a rate for the country you drove in, that rate is used. If it has not, you are paid at your own country’s rate — the country on your employee record. A drive that crosses a border is paid at the rate for the country you set off from.

If your phone could not work out the country — no signal, or you did not give it permission — you are still paid, at your own country’s rate. You never lose a drive over it.

Getting paid. Someone with finance permission turns a month of business drives into an expense claim. That claim can be paid on its own or added to your pay as a reimbursement, which is not taxed because it repays money you already spent.

Mileage appears in the mobile app only on installs that use it. A business whose staff do not drive to customers will not see it.

Reporting And Close Boundaries

Current profit-and-loss and finance-period summaries are cash-basis: paid invoices count as income, while paid bills and paid expense claims count as expense. Open receivables, payables, and claims are shown as gaps or pending work rather than paid totals. Multi-currency summaries can contain raw, unconverted sums and explicitly flag that limitation.

/finance/close is a readiness hub. It does not lock a period, prevent later edits, post a close journal, or certify results. Complete the organization’s authoritative accounting close and retain its reviewer evidence separately.

Route Guide

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