Accounting on Domicium
A real double-entry ledger: what the chart of accounts contains, how a transaction posts, how to read a trial balance, why a posted entry can never be edited, and how owner statements are produced.
Accountants, finance-minded managers, and owners who want to understand where the numbers on their statement came from.
Before you start
- You belong to an organisation and hold a role with accounting rights — Property management operations covers setting that up.
- You are comfortable with the idea of debits and credits.
By the end you can
- Name the accounts a rent receipt, an expense and a deposit each touch.
- Post a balanced transaction and see it in the trial balance.
- Read a trial balance and tell whether the books balance.
- Correct a wrong posting the only way the ledger allows: reverse it with a reason, then repost.
- Produce an owner statement for a period and know what the owner will see.
- Set up companies, departments and cost centres so postings report by entity.
Lesson 1 of 6
The chart of accounts
Objective. Familiarity with the accounts your postings will actually hit.
The chart of accounts is seeded when your organisation is created and is the same shape for everyone: assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses, each with a numeric code. Bank is 1000 and Mobile Money is 1010. Rental income is 4000 and other income is 4100. Repairs and maintenance is 5000, utilities 5100. Security deposits held is 2000, which is a liability rather than income. Owner distributions is 3000.
There is no chart-of-accounts screen. You cannot view the full list, add an account, rename one or deactivate one from the interface. What you can see is every account that has movement, in the trial balance.
- 1Open the management console and choose “Accounting” under Finance in the left rail.
- 2Scroll to the “Trial balance” card. Every account with any movement is listed with its Account, Type, Debit and Credit.
- 3Note the five account types and which side each normally sits on: assets and expenses debit, liabilities, equity and income credit.
- 4Learn the five pairs the interface can post, so you can predict where money will land — rent received debits cash and credits 4000; an expense debits the expense account and credits cash; an owner payout debits 3000 and credits cash; other income credits 4100; a deposit received credits 2000.
- 5Note that a security deposit is a liability, not income. It is money you are holding, not money you have earned.
You did it right if. Given any of the five transaction types, you can say which two accounts it will touch and which side each will land on.
Watch out. Do not expect to post to an arbitrary account. The interface offers five fixed templates and nothing else, so accounts such as rent receivable, prepayments, VAT payable or accruals are only reachable through the modules that post to them automatically — receivables, tax, procurement. If you need a posting the templates cannot make, it does not have a route today.
about 10 minutes
Lesson 2 of 6
Post your first transaction
Objective. A balanced double-entry in the ledger, posted from the interface.
Every posting here is double-entry. You choose a transaction type and an amount, and the platform composes both sides. A batch cannot reach the ledger unless debits equal credits — that is a database constraint, not a validation message, so an unbalanced entry has no path in.
Attach a property wherever you can. Property-level profitability is only real if the spend is attributed to the property it was spent on.
- 1On the Accounting page, find the “Record a transaction” card.
- 2Choose the “Transaction”: Rent received, Expense / bill paid, Owner payout, Other income, or Security deposit received.
- 3Enter the “Amount (GHS)” and set the “Date”.
- 4Choose the cash account. The label reads “Received into” for money in and “Paid from” for money out. Options are Bank and Mobile Money.
- 5For an expense, choose the “Expense category”: Repairs & maintenance, Utilities, Management fee or Other expenses. This field only appears for expenses.
- 6Choose the “Property (optional)” if the transaction belongs to one.
- 7Add a “Note (optional)”, for example July rent.
- 8Press “Post transaction”.
You did it right if. A confirmation reads “Posted to the ledger.”, the entry appears at the top of “Recent transactions” with its type badge, and the trial balance totals have moved by the amount you posted.
Watch out. Manual postings are not deduplicated. Pressing “Post transaction” twice creates two entries, and neither can be deleted or edited afterwards. If the page seems slow, wait and check “Recent transactions” before pressing again.
about 8 minutes
Lesson 3 of 6
Read the trial balance
Objective. A quick, reliable check that the books hang together.
The trial balance lists every account with movement and totals the debits and the credits. Because the ledger refuses unbalanced entries, the totals should always agree — the chip is there to prove it rather than to catch you out.
It is as at today, across the whole organisation. There is no date picker, no filter and no drill-down from a row into the entries behind it.
- 1Open the Accounting page and scroll to “Trial balance”.
- 2Read the chip in the card header. It reads “Balanced” with a tick, or “Out of balance” in red.
- 3Read down the rows. Each shows the account name, its type, and the debit or credit total.
- 4Read the footer, which totals Debit and Credit.
- 5Sanity-check the four cards at the top of the page against it: Cash on hand, Income for the last thirty days, Expenses for the last thirty days, and Net.
You did it right if. The header chip reads “Balanced”, and the Debit and Credit totals in the footer are the same figure.
Watch out. Do not use the trial balance as a period report. It cannot be dated, so it always shows life-to-date, and the income and expense cards above it cover a rolling thirty days rather than a month you chose. For a period figure, use the owner statement on a property’s books page, which does take a from and to date.
about 6 minutes
Lesson 4 of 6
Corrections, and why you cannot edit a posting
Objective. A correct mental model of what happens when a posting is wrong.
Posted entries and journal lines are append-only, enforced by database trigger. That applies to administrators too. An attempt to amend one is refused with a message telling you to reverse it and repost, and an attempt to delete one is refused outright.
The correction path is a reversal, and it is on the screen. Each row in Recent transactions carries a Reverse control. It writes a mirror-image entry — every debit becomes a credit and vice versa, carried to the same tenant, vendor or owner as the original — keeps the original visible, links the two, and records who did it and why in the audit log.
- 1Before posting anything, check the amount, the date, the cash account and the property. These are the four you cannot fix afterwards.
- 2If you do post something wrong, do not try to edit it — there is no control, and the database would refuse.
- 3Do not post an equal and opposite entry using the templates to fake a reversal. That leaves two unlinked postings and no record of which corrects which. Use Reverse, which links them.
- 4Find the entry in Recent transactions and choose Reverse. Type a reason — a blank one is refused, because a year from now an unexplained reversal reads exactly like someone quietly altering the books.
- 5Post the corrected entry afterwards. The finished record is three rows: the original, its reversal, and the repost.
- 6Read the error messages when they appear. They name the rule: journal lines are append-only, an entry posted earlier cannot be amended, only the entry date and company may be settled after posting.
You did it right if. The reversed entry and its reversal both show in Recent transactions with their amounts struck through, and the original now reads Reversed instead of offering a Reverse control.
Watch out. An entry can only be reversed once, and a reversal cannot itself be reversed — both are refused. If the reversal was the mistake, post a fresh correcting entry rather than trying to undo it.
about 8 minutes
Lesson 5 of 6
Property books and owner statements
Objective. A statement for a period that an owner can read, and a clear view of what they see.
Each property has its own books page showing income, expenses, net operating and the balance due to the owner, with the ledger entries beneath. The owner statement derives from those entries rather than from a spreadsheet: income is credits to income accounts net of debits, expenses the reverse, and the management fee accrues as a percentage of income when the property is managed.
Only one statement can exist per property per period. A second attempt at the same period is rejected.
- 1Open the Accounting page and find the “Property books” card.
- 2Follow the link for the property you want.
- 3Read the “Owner statement” card. It lists Income, Expenses, the Management fee with its percentage when the property is managed, Net to owner, Paid out, and Balance due.
- 4Set the “From” and “To” dates for the period you are closing.
- 5Press “Generate statement”.
- 6Check the “Past statements” card, which lists each period with its balance due.
- 7Read the “Ledger” card below to see the individual entries behind the figures.
You did it right if. The period you generated appears in “Past statements” with a balance due, and the owner sees the same figures in the Statements table at the bottom of /dashboard/owner.
Watch out. “Generate statement” gives no feedback of any kind — no success message, no error. If the period duplicates one that already exists, it is silently rejected and the page re-renders unchanged. Always check “Past statements” afterwards to confirm the statement was actually created.
about 10 minutes
Lesson 6 of 6
Entities and reporting structure
Objective. Companies, departments and cost centres set up so postings report by entity.
One organisation can hold several legal entities. Departments, cost centres, projects and bank accounts sit under a company, and every ledger posting carries its company, so the books can report per entity rather than as one undifferentiated pile.
Set this up before you start posting in volume. Dimensions are carried at posting time, and there is no way to reclassify a posted entry afterwards.
- 1Open “Entities” under Setup in the left rail.
- 2Open “Add a company / legal entity”. Enter the “Company name”, a “Code”, the “Base currency” and the “Registration no.”, then press “Add company”.
- 3Open “Add a department”, enter a “Name” and “Code”, choose the “Company”, and press “Add department”.
- 4Open “Add a cost centre”, enter a “Name” and “Code”, choose the “Company” and optionally a “Department”, and press “Add cost centre”.
- 5Open “Add a bank account”, enter the “Account name”, choose the “Company”, enter the “Bank”, “Account no.” and “Currency”, and press “Add bank account”.
- 6Read the “Ledger activity by company” table to confirm postings are landing against the right entity.
You did it right if. The four figures at the top of the page — Companies, Departments, Cost centres, Bank accounts — match what you set up, and each new record appears in its card.
Watch out. Nothing on this page can be edited, and companies and bank accounts cannot be removed at all. Departments and cost centres have a “Remove” link that deletes immediately with no confirmation step. Check the spelling of a name and the base currency of a company before you press Add.
about 10 minutes