Settings ▸ Accounting

Settings ▸ Accounting is where you maintain your firm’s General Ledger. Two tabs handle the full surface: Chart of Accounts for the numeric chart 1000–9999, and Journal Entries for every posted (and drafted) double-entry transaction. Reports — Trial Balance, Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and the GL Drill-Down — open from the Reports button in the top-right; they’re documented separately at Settings ▸ Accounting ▸ Reports.

Chart of Accounts

Athenty seeds a Canadian-convention numeric chart on first run and lets admins extend it. The ranges follow the standard legal-accounting convention:

Range	Type	Examples
1000–1999	Asset	Operating bank, Trust Bank (1100-X), Accounts Receivable, ITC receivable
2000–2999	Liability	Accounts Payable, Client Trust Liability (2100-X), HST/GST Payable
3000–3999	Equity	Retained Earnings, capital
4000–4999	Revenue	Service Revenue, FX Gain
5000–5999	Expense	Disbursements, operating expenses

Adding an account

Click + New account. Fill in:

• Code — a 4-digit number in the range that matches the account type
• Type — Asset / Liability / Equity / Revenue / Expense
• Name — display label
• Parent account (optional) — for nested rollups; must share the type
• Currency — defaults to the org default
• Description — optional context

Code is locked after creation per standard legal-accounting convention. Re-coding a live account would corrupt every historical journal line. Archive and create a new account if you need to re-classify.

Editing + archiving

Hover any account row to surface Edit (pencil) and Archive (folder) actions. Archive marks the account inactive: it hides from posting forms but stays visible in historical reports. Athenty hard-blocks archive on:

1. System accounts — the seeded chart cannot be deleted, only renamed.
2. Accounts referenced by non-reversed journal lines — clean up those lines first or archive on a quieter account.

Journal Entries

The viewer lists every double-entry transaction across the org. Filter by Status (posted / draft / reversed / all), Posted ≥, and Posted ≤. Each row shows the date, description, source type, fiscal period, and total. Click a row to expand its DR/CR lines.

Sources

Most entries are auto-posted from upstream activity:

Source type	Posted by
trust_receipt	Matter ▸ Trust Accounting ▸ Trust Receipt
trust_payment / trust_disbursement	Trust disbursement workflow
fee / time_entry	Fee posting at invoice time
manual	Manual JE editor (this page)
reversal	Any reverse-and-replace flow

Creating a manual entry

Click + New manual entry. The dialog opens with two pre-set lines (one DR, one CR). For each line, pick an Account, choose a Side (DR or CR), enter an Amount, and optionally a Description. Click + Add line for additional rows.

Live balance check: a Debits / Credits total appears below the lines with a green ✓ Balanced or red ⚠ Unbalanced indicator. Posted entries must always balance.

Two save options:

• Save as draft — parks the entry for later. Drafts are editable + discardable; they do not appear in the trial balance.
• Post entry — finalizes into the audit ledger. Posted entries are append-only — corrections must use the reverse path.

Drafts queue

Filter Status to draft to see all parked drafts. Hover a draft row to surface Edit / post draft (pencil) and Discard draft (trash) actions. Editing a draft reopens the dialog pre-filled; saving either keeps it as a draft or posts it.

Posted + reversed entries

Posted entries are immutable. Reversed entries (status = reversed) show that an explicit reversal was applied — the original lines remain in the audit trail and the offsetting reversal lines sum to zero. Both states are read-only on this viewer.

Payment application

The Payment application setting (Settings ▸ Accounting ▸ Payments) decides how an invoice’s three parts — fees, disbursements and taxes — are treated when only part of the invoice is paid, and when it is written off.

Method	Partly-paid invoice	Write-off
Pro-rata	Each payment is split across fees, disbursements and tax in the bill’s own proportions.	The unpaid balance is split in the bill’s original proportions.
By rank	Payments fill the parts in an order you set (for example taxes, then disbursements, then fees).	The split follows what is still unpaid on each part.
Blend Tax Payments (default for new organizations)	Payments fill disbursements and their tax first, then fees and their tax — the tax is paid along with the part it belongs to.	The split follows what is still unpaid on each part.

The setting feeds the Timekeeper Revenue report’s collected figure and sets the fees / disbursements / tax split of every new write-off and Provisional Write Off, including Write off all outstanding on a matter. Changing it never changes a past write-off — each write-off saves the split it used.

Suggested — verify. Attorney review pending.

The tax share of a written-off balance is what a bad-debt deduction is measured on — federally the Excise Tax Act, s. 231; other regimes have their own rule. Which method matches your firm’s practice is attorney-review-pending; Athenty does not choose it for you. See Write-offs ▸ How the unpaid balance is split.

Reports

The Reports button (top-right) opens the financial-statements surface documented at Settings ▸ Accounting ▸ Reports.

Period close + tax rates

Period close (locking entries through a date so retroactive postings are blocked) and tax-rate management land in subsequent #213 PRs. They will surface as their own top-level entries under Settings ▸ Accounting and their own docs pages.