The Books area

Your posted ledger in the sidebar - transactions, financial statements, account schedules, per-VIN gross, your own expenses and journal entries, and a chart of accounts you can extend.

The Books area in the sidebar shows the money side of your operation as posted, double-entry activity: every sale, payment, vehicle purchase, recon cost, and floor plan event books a balanced journal entry within minutes of happening, and this is where you read them.

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Everything here is management-basis: accrual at sale, cash collections, BHPH interest as collected. The statements are not audited GAAP financial statements, and the schedules are not a trial balance. If your books of record are QuickBooks (or whatever system you told us about under Settings → Accounting), this area is the always-current, in-app view of the same entries; verify your books with your own accountant.

Transactions

Books → Transactions lists every posted entry for your date range, newest first, with filters by source (sales, payments, vehicle costs, manual entries...) and by reference. Click any ref to open the full entry: its debit and credit lines, and, for corrected entries, links between the original and its dated reversing entry.

Record your own entries

On the Pro plan and up (and during any trial), dealerships whose books live in AutoDealer can record what the platform doesn't capture automatically:

Record expense - the everyday one: "we spent X on Y, paid from Z" (rent, utilities, advertising). Two clicks, and it posts like everything else.
New journal entry - the raw N-line entry for you or your accountant, with a live balance check.

Made a mistake? Open the entry under Transactions and Void it: a reversing entry dated today posts, the original stays in its period, and you re-enter it correctly. Entries are never edited or deleted.

Both live under Books → Transactions. If your books of record are QuickBooks or another system, record expenses there instead - the buttons explain this too.

Financial statements

Books → Profit & Loss shows income, cost of goods sold, gross profit, expenses, and net income over the date range you pick, straight from posted journals. Books → Balance Sheet shows assets, liabilities, and equity as of the end of the picked range; retained earnings is computed from all posted activity through that date, never stored, so the sheet always balances. Both pages print (chrome-free, honesty header included) and export CSV.

Two things make the statements honest rather than optimistic:

Expenses appear when you record them. On plans below Pro nothing records rent, payroll, or utilities, so the P&L overstates profit; the page says so.
Opening balances complete the balance sheet. Until you enter what the dealership held and owed on day one, the sheet reflects only activity posted in AutoDealer. The balance sheet links to a guided opening-balances journal entry (Books → New entry) that prefills the usual shape: bank balance, vehicles at cost, notes outstanding, loans, and the equity amount that makes it balance. Date it the day before your first activity here. If you migrated from QuickBooks and that file already holds these balances, do not import or push the opening entry into it, or every amount double-counts there.

Chart of Accounts

Books → Chart of Accounts lists every account with its all-time balance, grouped the way an accountant reads a chart: Assets, Liabilities, Income (with discounts underneath), Expenses (cost of goods sold first, then operating expenses), and Equity. Every row has a pencil to edit it, and each section has its own Add a new account link that starts you off in the right type.

Adding your own accounts

On Pro and up you can add custom accounts under asset (a second bank account), liability (a business credit card or loan), income, cost of goods sold, expense, or equity. The type is permanent once the account exists: if you pick the wrong one, add a new account under the right type and archive the first.

Custom asset and liability accounts also appear as Paid from choices when you record an expense, so "paid from the second account" or "put it on the business card" both work. Built-in assets like Vehicle Inventory never appear there, because they do not pay bills.

Renaming a built-in account

Open the pencil on any built-in row and change its name. That is the same name the QuickBooks export uses and the same value Settings → Accounting edits, so both places always agree. Renaming a built-in is owner and manager only, and it is not tied to your plan: an Accounting user can open the row but the name field is locked.

Archiving and deleting

Archive a custom account you no longer use and it stops appearing on new entries while its history stays readable. Archived accounts remain on this page, dimmed, and can be restored at any time.

An account you added but never used can be deleted outright, in two steps. Once anything has been recorded against it, deleting is refused and archiving is the only option, because accounting history is never removed.

Built-in accounts can never be archived or deleted. Sales, payments, and floor plan events post to them automatically, so they stay active to keep your books balanced. Automatic postings always land in the built-in chart; custom accounts receive only the entries you record yourself.

Account schedules

Accounts are grouped by type: assets, liabilities, equity, income, cost of goods sold, expenses. Only the types you actually have activity in appear. For the date range you pick at the top of the Books area, each account shows:

Opening - the balance carried into the range
Debits and Credits - posted activity inside the range
Closing - opening plus activity

The account names are the same ones the QuickBooks export uses, including any renames you made, whether from the pencil on the Chart of Accounts or from Settings → Accounting.

Per-VIN posted gross

The gross table answers "what did we really make on that car?" from posted entries: sale revenue, F&I and fee income, minus the vehicle's cost of goods (acquisition plus recon) as actually booked. Because it reads posted entries rather than a point-in-time snapshot, a recon bill that arrived after the sale shows up here correctly.

The same figure appears on each deal's Review step as Gross (posted).

Recent journal entries

The entry list shows each posting with its date, reference (SALE-, PMT-, COST-, and so on), and memo. Corrections never rewrite history: voiding a payment, unwinding a deal, or deleting a cost posts a reversing entry dated the day of the correction, marked as a reversal next to its original. What your bookkeeper already imported for a closed month never changes underneath them.