How DovleEntry works
DovleEntry follows the oldest rule of bookkeeping, double entry: money never appears or disappears, it moves from one account to another. Once that is clear, everything else follows.
Accounts
An account is anything that money goes in or out of. There are four kinds:
| Kind | What it is | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Asset | What you own: a bank account, your wallet, savings. | Net Worth |
| Liability | What you owe: a credit card, a loan. | Net Worth |
| Income | Where money comes from: a salary, interest. | Profit & Loss |
| Expense | Where money goes: rent, groceries, fees. | Profit & Loss |
Assets and liabilities have a balance: what is in them at a given date. Income and expenses have a flow: what went through them during a period. That’s why the first two are in the Net Worth tab, which tells you what you have, and the other two in Profit & Loss, which tells you what you earned and spent.
Accounts of a kind can be put in groups, such as “Bank” for your checking and savings accounts, to get a subtotal for them. See Accounts and groups.
Transactions
A transaction moves an amount from one account to another, at a date. When your salary is paid, it moves from Salary to Checking. When you buy groceries with your debit card, the money moves from Checking to Groceries.
Because every transaction has two sides, the totals always agree with each other: what your income accounts brought in, minus what your expense accounts took out, is what your assets gained or your liabilities lost. You never enter the same amount twice.
A transaction can also have more than two sides: a bill paid partly by card and partly in cash, or a pay slip with its taxes and deductions. These are split transactions. And one side can stay empty, “unassigned”, like the starting balance of an account, which comes from no other account.
The date range
At the top of the window, the date range says which period you are looking at: a month, a quarter, a year, or any period you choose. It applies everywhere at once. The Transactions tab lists the transactions of that period, Profit & Loss adds up what came in and went out during it, and Net Worth gives the balances at its start and at its end.
The past and the future
A date range can end in the future. Then DovleEntry counts what hasn’t happened yet: the schedules you set up for what comes back regularly, like rent or a salary, and the budgets you set for what you expect to spend. The graphs show the past in green and the future in gray, with a thin red line at today. To see only what has happened, choose Year To Date: Ctrl+Alt+4.
Currencies
Every amount has a currency. Your document has a native currency, in which the totals are given, but any amount can be in another one: type 200 EUR and that’s what it is. See Currencies.
The document
Everything is in one file, which you save where you like: your accounts, transactions, schedules, budgets and the properties of the document. DovleEntry also remembers, on your computer, how you left each document: its tabs and the accounts you excluded from the totals. See Documents and saving.