Finance

Finance & Accounting

Expenses, vendor bills, accounts payable/receivable, reconciliation, GST, and Zoho Books.

Overview

The finance module manages the business's financial layer beyond the checkout register: tracking what the salon spends (expenses, vendor bills), what it is owed (accounts receivable), what it owes (accounts payable), and reconciling bank activity against records. It produces the P&L, GST reports, and exports to accounting software.

Chart of Accounts

The chart of accounts organises financial activity into categories. SalonOS ships with a default India-oriented chart of accounts that brands can customise:

  • Revenue: Service revenue, retail revenue, membership revenue
  • Cost of Goods Sold: Product costs, supply costs
  • Operating Expenses: Rent, utilities, staff costs, marketing
  • Other Income/Expense: Interest, one-time items

Each transaction is posted to an account in the chart.

Expenses

Operational expenses incurred by the business:

  • Rent and utilities
  • Supplies and professional products
  • Marketing and advertising spend
  • Equipment maintenance
  • Travel and training

Recording an Expense

  1. Create the expense entry: amount, category, date, vendor, description
  2. Attach receipt (photo or PDF upload)
  3. Link to a payment method (cash from drawer, bank transfer, card)
  4. Post to the appropriate account in the chart

Petty cash expenses created in the cash register module are automatically linked to finance as expense entries.

Vendor Bills (Accounts Payable)

A vendor bill is the formal record of money owed to a supplier. Created when a purchase order is received, or manually for non-PO purchases.

Bill Lifecycle

State Description
Draft Being assembled
Open Awaiting payment
Partially paid Some amount paid
Paid Fully settled
Overdue Past due date

Bills feed into accounts payable aging reports. Payment of a bill records the payment method and bank reference.

Accounts Payable (AP) Aging

A report showing outstanding vendor bills grouped by age:

  • Current (not yet due)
  • 1–30 days overdue
  • 31–60 days overdue
  • 60+ days overdue

Used by managers to prioritise payments and avoid supply disruption.

Accounts Receivable (AR)

AR tracks money owed to the salon by clients. This primarily arises from:

  • Invoices with a deferred payment arrangement
  • Corporate accounts billed periodically
  • Client wallet balances (store credit issued but not yet used)

AR aging mirrors AP: outstanding client receivables grouped by age.

Bank Reconciliation

Reconciliation matches the salon's financial records against its bank statement:

  1. Import bank statement (CSV or manual entry)
  2. System suggests matches between bank rows and internal transactions (invoices paid, bills settled, expenses)
  3. Manager confirms matches or creates new entries for unmatched rows
  4. Unmatched bank rows are investigated and resolved
  5. Reconciled period is closed

Reconciliation ensures the books agree with actual bank activity and surfaces missing records or errors.

GST (Goods and Services Tax)

GST Configuration

  • Each service and product is assigned an HSN/SAC code and GST rate
  • The brand's GSTIN is configured in settings
  • Invoice formatting includes GSTIN, HSN/SAC, and tax breakdown

GST Return Reports

SalonOS generates GST-ready summaries:

  • GSTR-1 (outward supplies): all taxable invoices issued
  • GSTR-3B (summary): total taxable supply, tax collected, input tax credit

These are exported for filing — SalonOS is not a direct GST portal integration but produces the data needed for filing.

Input Tax Credit (ITC)

Vendor bills with GST amounts are captured to support ITC claims. The ITC summary shows total GST paid on purchases that may be claimed against GST collected on sales.

P&L Statement

The profit and loss statement aggregates:

  • Revenue by category (service, retail, membership)
  • Cost of goods sold
  • Gross profit
  • Operating expenses by category
  • Net profit

Available for any date range, per location or brand-wide.

Zoho Books Integration

SalonOS syncs with Zoho Books for organisations that use it as their accounting system:

  • Invoices exported to Zoho as sales invoices
  • Vendor bills exported as purchase bills
  • Expenses exported as journal entries
  • Chart of accounts mapping configured in settings
  • Sync can be scheduled (daily) or triggered manually

The sync is one-way: SalonOS is the source of record for salon transactions; Zoho Books is the accounting system of record for the business entity.

Key Data Entities

  • Expense — operational spending entry
  • VendorBill — supplier bill (accounts payable)
  • APEntry — accounts payable ledger entry
  • AREntry — accounts receivable ledger entry
  • BankSettlement — bank statement row
  • ReconciliationMatch — pairing of a bank row to an internal record
  • COGSAllocation — cost of goods attribution per sale
  • Payout — batch payment disbursement (e.g. to a supplier)

Permissions

Action org_owner brand_manager location_manager front_desk
Record expenses Yes Yes Yes Petty cash only
Create vendor bills Yes Yes Yes No
Approve vendor bill payment Yes Yes Yes No
View AP/AR reports Yes Yes Yes No
Run bank reconciliation Yes Yes Yes No
View P&L Yes Yes Yes No
Configure chart of accounts Yes Yes No No
Configure Zoho integration Yes Yes No No
Export GST reports Yes Yes Yes No