Managing Your Petty Cash Account with Cash Deposits and Withdrawals

The Cash Deposit/Withdraw page lets you record cash deposit and withdrawal transactions between your Petty cash and your Bank account. This article covers:

• How Petty cash accounts work
• Recording a cash deposit or withdrawal
• Tracking cash deposits / withdrawals
• Accounting entries related to a cash deposit / withdrawal (advanced)

How Petty cash accounts work

Setting up a Petty cash account

In the platform, you can create one or more Petty cash accounts, separate from your Bank accounts, and customize their names.

To do this, go to Accounting > Configuration, then Petty cash. You'll land directly on the "Organization's Petty cash" tab.

Crediting or debiting the Petty cash account

Your Petty cash account (account 531) is credited or debited based on the transactions you record in the platform:

• If you record an expenditure paid in cash, your Petty cash account is credited;
• If you record revenue received in cash, your Petty cash account is debited.

Here's how this looks in the platform.

Say you paid for a computer monitor in cash. On the Accounting > Book entry > Expenditure page, you entered the following transaction:

The platform will then credit your Petty cash account linked to your "Main Account" Bank account.

Recording a cash deposit or withdrawal

If you go to the bank to deposit or withdraw cash from your nonprofit's bank account, you must record it in the platform — it has no way of knowing you made a trip to the bank.

You'll need to record the cash deposit or withdrawal as an accounting entry.

To do this, go to Accounting > Book entry > Cash Deposit/Withdraw.

You'll land on a dedicated page where you need to specify:

1. The Bank account and Petty cash account affected by the transaction;
2. Whether it's a withdrawal or a deposit;
3. The amount;
4. The date of the transaction.

Click Save. An entry is posted between Bank account 512 and its associated Petty cash account 531. The real-world deposit or withdrawal now exists as an accounting entry between the Bank account and its linked Petty cash account.

Tracking cash deposits / withdrawals

You can find your deposits and withdrawals by going to Accounting > Search and filtering entries by the Petty cash account of your choice.

You can also track deposits and withdrawals over a given period using the accounting documents. By filtering on a specific Petty cash account, the General ledger displays:

• The balance at the start of the accounting period;
• A detailed breakdown of recorded entries;
• The balance as of the viewing date or at the end of the accounting period.

Accounting entries related to a cash deposit / withdrawal (advanced)

You don't need to know these entries — the platform handles them automatically. This section is purely for your reference 😉

For each cash deposit, the platform posts the following entries:

In summary, for a cash deposit:

• The Petty cash account is credited;
• The Bank account is debited.

For a cash withdrawal, the movement is reversed: the Petty cash account is debited, and the Bank account is credited.