What the numbers mean, and where they come from

Your login

A named, read-only account at books.cnsusvi.com.

The accountant role can open every screen and export everything, but cannot create, edit or delete anything. You cannot accidentally change a figure, and nothing you do needs to be reversed.

Two things you won't see, by design: settings (which hold payment credentials) and attachments such as scanned check images, because those show the payer's bank account and routing numbers. If you need a specific receipt or check image for a workpaper, ask Lisle and he can send it.

Please turn on two-step sign-in via Security in the top bar. You're looking at a complete financial record of the business.

Basis & scope

Read this before relying on any number.

Cash basis

Income is recognised when a payment is received, not when an invoice is raised. Expenses are recognised when paid. An invoice sitting unpaid at 31 December appears in A/R but not in income.

What this system is not

Stated plainly so there are no surprises: this is a cash-basis receipts-and-payments system, not a double-entry ledger.

• There is no general ledger, no journal entries and no trial balance. Nothing here is debits-and-credits.
• There is no balance sheet. Fixed assets, depreciation, loans, equity and accruals are not tracked. A/R is the only balance-type figure, derived from unpaid invoices.
• Inventory is not tracked. Parts are expensed when purchased.
• Payroll is not processed here. Any wages appear only as expense entries.

In practice this is a well-organised set of books and records for you to prepare from — the equivalent of a clean cash book plus sales and purchase listings — not a finished set of financial statements.

How data gets in

Four routes, each with different reliability.

Every expense and payment carries the username of whoever entered it, and imports record the source description from the statement, so any figure can be traced back.

Profit & loss

Reports → Profit & loss, for any date range.

What's in income

Two sources, added together:

• Invoice payments — everything received against an invoice.
• Other income — deposits recorded outside the invoicing flow: counter card sales, cash sales, direct transfers.

What's excluded from expenses, and why

Credit-card payoffs and transfers between accounts are not treated as expenses. They're movements of money, not costs — the underlying purchases are already recorded individually from the card statement. Counting both would double the expense.

These are never silently dropped: the report shows them in a separate excluded line with the total and a footnote, and they appear in the CSV export the same way. If you'd rather see them, the figure is right there to add back.

Owner's draw

Draws are recorded but excluded from expenses, as a distribution rather than a cost. Ask Lisle for the total if you need it for the capital account.

Gross receipts tax

Reports → USVI GRT. Monthly, for the whole year.

Calculated at 5% on gross receipts, with a $9,000 monthly exemption applied before tax. Both rates are configurable, so confirm they still match current USVI requirements before filing season.

A/R aging

Reports → A/R aging.

Unpaid invoice balances bucketed as current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and 90+ days past due, with the customer and invoice detail behind each. Drafts are excluded — an invoice only becomes receivable once marked sent.

Because the books are cash basis, A/R sits outside the P&L. It's the bridge if you ever need to present accrual figures.

Year-end package

Reports → Year-end package, then choose the year. One CSV with four sections.

1. Profit & loss — gross income, expenses by category, anything excluded and why, and net profit on a cash basis.
2. Income by month — twelve monthly totals. These tie to the P&L income and to the GRT receipts.
3. Gross receipts — the monthly GRT table with rate and exemption stated.
4. Contract labor — vendors paid under that category, flagged LIKELY 1099 at $600 or more.

Exports

Everything leaves as CSV. Nothing is locked in.

Filtered views export as filtered, so set the date range and category first, then download.

Reconciling to the bank

The relationship to check each month.

The three figures on the first line are computed from the same data and should always agree. If they don't, something is wrong with the data rather than with your arithmetic — tell Lisle.

The one to watch: card settlements

Card sales reach the bank as batched BANKCARD deposits, usually a day or two after the sale and net of fees. Two things follow:

• A card sale that went through an invoice is already recorded as an invoice payment. Importing its bank deposit as well would double-count it. The import unticks these by default for that reason.
• Counter-terminal sales that never became invoices are only captured by importing those deposits. The business runs two terminals — one e-commerce, one at the counter — settling into the same account.

So when reconciling a month, expect recorded income to be gross while the bank shows net of processing fees, and check that counter sales have been captured exactly once.

Known quirks

Things that would otherwise cost you an hour working out.

Items to review with Lisle

Open questions the records can't answer on their own.

1. Category split for Local/US Taxes — how much is GRT versus personal income tax.
2. Meals — which entries are business and which personal, and the deductible treatment.
3. Owner's draw — confirm the annual total for the capital account.
4. Stale receivables — which pre-2024 balances should be written off.
5. Contract labor — confirm the vendor list is complete and that W-9s are held for anyone at $600 or more.
6. Counter card sales — confirm they've been captured once and only once for each month.
7. Fixed assets — equipment purchases are expensed here; anything requiring capitalisation and depreciation needs your treatment outside the system.
8. GRT filings — reconcile the estimates here against returns actually filed and paid.

Working calendar

Records & retention

What supporting documentation exists, and where.

• Check images — photographs of checks written are attached to their expense entries. Visible to the owner; request copies as needed.
• Bank and card statements — held by Lisle; the imports here are derived from them.
• Invoices and receipts — every invoice can be produced as a PDF at any time, including its payment history.
• Audit trail — each expense and payment records who entered it and when. Deleting a user doesn't erase their name from past entries.
• Backups — the full database is backed up nightly and copied off-site, retained for 180 days.