CFO quick start
The money in APEX posts from the operation itself — receiving stock, shipping a work order, invoicing an order — into a real double-entry ledger you read from one module. This guide is your orientation: which tab does what, where the reports live, and what only owners and admins see.
Roles: Accounting opens its full depth to owners and admins. Members get a reduced view — Invoices and Banking — and an access notice on the ledger tabs.
Your screens
| Where | Why you live there |
|---|---|
| Accounting | The books — one module, all tabs below. |
| Reports | Five operational reports: open orders, aging, unbilled work, job margin. |
| Customers / Vendors | Terms, credit limits, and the AR / AP balance per account. |
| Settings → Integrations | Where the bank connection and the QuickBooks bridge are set up. |
The Accounting tabs, one line each
| Tab | What it holds | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | The AR / AP position at a glance. | Owners/admins |
| Journal | Every journal entry — peek any entry, post a New entry (balanced), Reverse entry on a posted one. | Owners/admins |
| Invoices | Customer invoices (AR) — open the detail, Record payment. | Everyone |
| Payables | Vendor bills (AP) — create and approve bills. | Owners/admins |
| Aging | AR / AP buckets (current / 30 / 60 / 90 / 90+), with Send reminder for collections. | Owners/admins |
| Chart of Accounts | The account list — create and edit accounts, account mappings, drill into an account’s ledger. | Owners/admins |
| Statements | Trial Balance, Balance Sheet (as of a date), Income Statement (a date range). | Owners/admins |
| Periods | The month-end switch — Close a period, Reopen one, soft-lock. | Owners/admins |
| Banking | The connected bank feed — balances, transactions, matching. | Everyone (managing gated) |
| Rules & Bridge | Bank auto-categorization rules, account mappings, revenue-recognition policies, and the QuickBooks bridge. | Owners/admins |
Your first day, task by task
1. Read the position
Open Accounting — it lands on Overview (AR / AP at a glance). Then check Aging for what’s slipping into the older buckets, and use Send reminder on overdue receivables.
2. Record what came in and approve what goes out
- Invoices → open the invoice → Record payment when the customer pays.
- Payables → create and approve the vendor bills the operation generated.
3. Match the bank feed
The Banking tab shows your connected accounts’ balances and transaction feed — match a transaction to its invoice or dismiss it, with the rules in Rules & Bridge auto-categorizing the routine ones. The connection itself is made under Settings → Integrations.
4. Run the statements
Statements produces the Trial Balance, the Balance Sheet as of a date, and the Income Statement over a range — straight from the same journal everything posts to. Click into any line’s account to see its ledger.
5. Close the month
On Periods, close the month once you’re satisfied — a closed period refuses back-dated postings. Reopen is there if you must.
6. Watch the operation’s money
Reports carries five canned views: Open POs (by vendor, with aging), Open SOs (by customer), RO Aging, Unbilled WOs (shipped but not invoiced — revenue waiting), and Job Margin (profitability per shipped work order). Rows deep-link to the source orders.
7. Know where postings come from
Receiving a PO posts inventory and an accrued payable; Ship + consolidate on a work order posts revenue and COGS atomically; invoicing a sales order posts AR; closing a deal won accrues commission. Quotes post nothing at any status. See what the CFO sees in the quoting guide and Documents & shipping in the work orders guide.
Watch out for
- The gates are real. Overview, Payables, Aging, Periods, and Rules & Bridge appear for owners and admins only, and the Unbilled WOs and Job Margin reports are withheld from members — if a controller needs them, their account needs the admin tier.
- The journal is append-only. A posted entry is never edited — Reverse entry posts an offsetting entry and both stay visible. Corrections are new entries, by design.
- Closing a period stops the shop’s shipping. A Ship + consolidate into a closed period is refused entirely — coordinate the close with operations, or expect calls from the floor.
- Don’t read margins off quotes. Console-created quotes carry no cost, so their margin figures read 0% or 100%. The honest margin lives downstream — in Job Margin and the order totals, where actual costs posted.
There is no deep Accounting guide yet — this page plus the FAQ are the current references, and the audit trail page covers how the books stay defensible.