Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Finance & Accounting.

This is one of the most central areas of the NZRT system. It covers everything from sending out invoices to reconciling your bank accounts, running double-entry accounting, and pulling together financial reports. If money moves through the business, it flows through this module.

Let’s start by walking you through the eight sub-modules that make up Finance & Accounting.

First up is Invoices and Payments. This is where you manage your billing — creating invoices for customers, recording incoming payments, and keeping track of what’s owed to you.

Next is Bank Accounts Management. This module lets you connect and manage your business bank accounts within the system, so you can track balances and transactions all in one place.

Third is Direct Debit and Credit Transfer. If your business collects payments directly from customer accounts, or pushes payments out to suppliers automatically, this is the module that handles those electronic transfer workflows.

Fourth is Accounting Management. This is the core accounting engine — think double-entry bookkeeping, chart of accounts, journal entries, and everything that underpins the financial records of the business.

Fifth is Donations Management. This one is particularly relevant if you’re working with the charitable services side of the organisation. It helps track and record donations separately from standard commercial transactions.

Sixth is Loan Management. If the business has taken on loans or is managing debt obligations, this module keeps track of loan balances, repayment schedules, and interest calculations.

Seventh is Margins. This is where you get visibility into profitability — how much margin you’re making on your products, services, or projects. It’s useful for understanding not just revenue, but what you’re actually keeping after costs.

And eighth is Financial Reports. This brings everything together. Once your transactions are recorded and reconciled, you use this module to generate the reports you need — profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash flow summaries, and more.

Now let’s talk about how money actually flows through the system, because understanding this flow is key to getting value from all those sub-modules.

There are two main flows — one for sales, and one for purchases.

On the sales side, it starts when you raise a sales invoice. That invoice goes into accounts receivable, which is the record of money owed to you. When the customer pays, that payment comes in as a bank receipt. You then reconcile that receipt against your bank account, and it rolls up into your trial balance — which is the foundation of your financial statements.

On the purchase side, it works in reverse. You receive a purchase invoice from a supplier. That goes into accounts payable — the record of money you owe to others. When you pay the supplier, that goes out as a bank payment. Again, you reconcile that against your bank account, and it feeds into the same trial balance.

So both flows — whether money is coming in or going out — follow the same pattern. Invoice, then accounts receivable or payable, then a bank transaction, then reconciliation, then the trial balance. Once you have that cycle in your head, the whole Finance and Accounting module starts to make a lot more sense.

The two related areas you will hear referred to most often are Customer Invoices on the accounts receivable side, and Supplier Invoices on the accounts payable side. These link directly into the financial flow just described — they are your entry points into the system on either side of the ledger.

To bring it all together: Finance and Accounting in the NZRT system is a full-cycle financial management toolkit. You have eight sub-modules covering invoicing and payments, bank account management, direct debits and credit transfers, core accounting, donations, loans, margins, and financial reporting. And the whole thing is held together by two mirrored financial flows — one for sales coming in, one for purchases going out — both of which end up reconciled and feeding into your trial balance.

Whether you are a consultant tracking billable time, someone in the accounts team processing supplier invoices, or a manager who needs a clear picture of margins and financial health, this is the area of the system that keeps everything grounded in the numbers.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.