About ledgers

If you are working with financial data, "Ledgers" allows you to create a statement that combines a subset, or all, of the Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet accounts into a single statement. Typically the only time you can combine these two together is on the Trial Balance, but with ledgers you can do it with a subset of accounts.

Basically, you can:

View (or share) a particular selection of certain accounts (instead of providing full access to a P&L or balance sheet)
Combine account data, customer and supplier; and connections data to create equations such as "Revenue per staff member"
Compare specific accounts to budgets or forecasts without sharing the entire budget or forecast

The ledgers feature works in the same way as our P&L and Balance Sheet features. Ledgers are found within "Analyze" > "Ledgers" where you are able to configure columns within "Build Ledgers" and rows within the build ( 🔨 ) mode.

This article is a step-by-step guide to help you create your first ledger and answer any technical questions you have. Alternatively, if you are working with data from a Stripe entity, you can create ledgers that combine cash flow, subscription and connection data in a single statement.

How to create a ledger

Row configuration

Navigate to "Analyze" > "Ledgers" and toggle on 🔨 mode within the Standard view. From here, click the + icon to create a new ledger and then click "Add data".

From the pop-up page, you can select any of the following sources to add to your ledger:

Accounts (Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet)
Totals (Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet)
Customer sales metrics (and select which customers to add)
Product sales metrics (and select which products to add)
Suppliers
Connection data
Chart of Accounts (add COA classifications as sources to your ledger or alter COA classifications)
Transaction tags (add one of your transaction tags as a source to your ledger)
Specify if you would like to use a custom Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet layout

Click "Add" once you are happy with your selections. From your P&L you can add revenue and expense accounts to your ledger and from the balance sheet you can add assets and liabilities accounts.

💡 Pro tip

Account names will be pulled from your default Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet layout. If you'd like to rename an account on a ledger, do so in your layouts so that the change will be universal in Syft.

Hover over the icon shown below to reveal the data source of each element added to your ledger:

Ledgers work similarly to your layouts where you can create multiple ledgers with different row and column configurations.

Column configuration

If you are adding a new ledger within the Standard, Multi-Period, Multi-Entity or Divisional view, then you will not be able to configure columns from those views. You will need to navigate to the "Build Ledger" top-tab to configure your ledger columns, as shown below:

Explanation of the drop-down headings:

Ledgers: row configurations that you've created
Column configuration: column configurations that you've created

You will be able to click "Add column" within any column configuration selection chosen; as long as you are in the "Build ledger" top tab.

Ledger formatting

You can complement your data with a host of formatting options such as headings, groups and equations. Toggle on the 🔨 button to transition into build mode. Click "Add format" to customize the ledger's layout with the options listed below.

Group accounts together
Move the data around
Indent data
Add headings
Add equations
Add totals

Under "Add format" > "Options" you will be able to choose whether you would like to show zero accounts ect. You can also create multiple ledgers which you can switch between by clicking on the ledger name drop-down. Click "Add source" to add additional accounts and data to your ledger.

💡 Pro tip

Equations are great for custom ratios or KPIs that are specific to your industry or business such as "Revenue per team member", "Website visits per sale" or "Salaries as a % of total expenses".

Views

Once you've added data to a ledger and saved it, you'll find your ledger in the left menu bar under "Analyze" > "Ledgers". Once you access your ledger, you'll have the following familiar views:

Standard
Multi-period
Divisional
Multi-entity (if you are in a consolidation)
Build Ledger

Click any heading to sort the data in your ledger, either by ascending or descending order. When you sort your data by any column, all the data from that data entry will travel together automatically.

Ultimately, your ledger works in a similar fashion to your profit and loss or balance sheet across entities, divisions and consolidations.

Add connections data to Ledgers

In this video, we show you an example of how you can add non-financial connection data to Ledgers: