Dashboard - an action center, not a static report
The Today tab is a work queue: overdue invoices and bills, bills due soon, open disputes, unallocated customer credit, and (if you can approve discounts) drafts sitting above your discount policy - all ranked by urgency and amount, so the most pressing thing is always first. This month’s revenue/expenses/net income figures are computed live from the same engine the Profit & Loss report uses, never a separately stored number. The Insights tab holds the charts: receivables by age, invoice status mix, and top KPI cards.
Approvals - the maker-checker inbox
When someone tries to issue an Invoice, Purchase Order, Bill, or Payment (or a few other gated actions) above their configured limit, AccountDesq doesn’t reject it - it quietly holds the document as a draft and routes a request here for a different, permitted person to approve. Approving re-runs the exact same posting logic the original action would have run, for real; rejecting sends it back with a reason. You can never approve your own request, and if the underlying amount changed after it was submitted, approval is blocked until someone takes a fresh look - protecting against silently approving a different number than what was reviewed.
Audit Trail
A read surface over an append-only log that many actions across the app already write to in the background - who did what, when, and (if relevant) which branch. Filter by action type or date range, expand a row for the full detail, and export to CSV (capped at 50,000 rows per export, with a clear warning if your filter produces more). Actions taken while someone is using "View as" impersonation are stamped with who was really behind the keyboard, not just the identity being viewed.
Journal Entries - a real, fully-posting feature
Manual double-entry posting, using the exact same posting engine every other document in AccountDesq uses - not a separate, weaker path. Debits must equal credits, you need at least two lines, the fiscal period must still be open, and the two control accounts AR and AP are deliberately excluded from the account picker here - use a Payment, Credit Note, or opening balance for those instead, so you can’t accidentally throw off what those control accounts are supposed to reconcile to. It’s reachable from the Settings hub or from the Journal Report, not the main navigation - it’s built for a professional accountant’s occasional correction, not daily use.
Onboarding
A guided first-run tour - business profile, currency, tax setup, customers, vendors, items, a bank account, opening balances, and your first invoice - and every step is skippable; nothing here is a gate. It shares its completion tracking with the Dashboard’s own onboarding checklist, so progress can never disagree between the two.
Import / Export Center
A single navigation hub linking out to each module’s own bulk-import wizard - Customers, Vendors, Items, Invoices, Bills, and Bank Statements - rather than a separate import engine of its own. Invoice and Bill imports are validated against your existing records and committed all-or-nothing, so a bad row can’t leave you with half-imported data.
Refund (standalone entry point)
A direct way to refund a customer without going through their invoice history first - but the same rule always applies: a refund can only ever pay out of that customer’s existing credit wallet, never straight against an open invoice. If they have no credit on file, the flow simply won’t let you continue.
Settings hub
A single card grid to every configuration surface in the app, in a deliberate order: Workspace basics first, then Team, Roles, Finance, Chart of Accounts, Taxes, then module-level preferences (Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Banking), then Notifications and Branding. A card you lack permission for still shows, just locked - so you know a setting exists even if you can’t open it. The Catalog (items, categories, price lists) is deliberately not listed here at all - it’s treated as a daily business resource, not a one-time setup step.
Finance settings
Three things live here: Fiscal Years (create periods, close them to block new postings, then lock them permanently - locking requires typing the exact period name to confirm, since it can’t be undone), Currency (AccountDesq runs in single-base-currency mode only - changing your base currency later doesn’t retroactively convert anything already posted), and Numbering (the format for every document type’s number sequence, with tokens for year/month/sequence and an atomic counter so two people saving at once can never collide on the same number).
Chart of Accounts
A standard chart is seeded automatically, and you’re free to rename, nest, or extend it - except the handful of system accounts, which can be renamed but never archived, since the app relies on them existing. New accounts can be created two ways: a plain-language 3-step wizard for anyone who doesn’t think in "asset vs. liability" terms, or the full advanced form. An Account Health banner proactively flags likely duplicate names, dormant accounts, and anything left unclassified - informational only, never blocking.
Account Register (drill-down)
The actual debit/credit detail behind one account’s Chart of Accounts balance - every journal line, chronological, with a running balance, and a link back to whatever document caused each one. Read-only by design: the ledger itself doesn’t get hand-edited here, only viewed and traced.
Roles & Permissions
System roles (Owner, Admin, Finance Manager, Accountant, Sales Manager, Viewer) are fixed and can’t be edited directly - but any of them can be "Customized," which clones its permissions into a new, fully editable custom role (optionally moving everyone who currently holds the system role over to the new one at the same time) without ever touching the original. Permissions are grouped by module with select-all/clear-all per group, and a role can’t be deleted while any member still holds it.
Team
Where people, roles, and spending controls all come together. Invites go out through your identity provider; the app’s own roles are assigned separately once someone joins. Two things specific to this screen matter most: Approval limits, where you set the per-member spending ceiling for each gated document type (blank means unlimited) - this is literally what the Approvals inbox checks against - and Location access, where you restrict a member to specific branches or warehouses (leaving everything unchecked grants access everywhere, which is the default). "View as" lets an Owner or Admin temporarily see the app as another member for up to 30 minutes, fully logged, and can never target another Owner.
Module preferences (Workspace, Accounting, Sales, Purchasing, Inventory, Banking, Notifications, Branding)
One shared, auto-saving settings form behind all of these - there’s no Save button anywhere. Toggles and dropdowns save the instant you change them; text and number fields save shortly after you stop typing, with a small status indicator confirming it (and rolling back automatically if a save fails). Leaving mid-save is blocked by a warning, so a field can’t be left in limbo.
What happens when someone tries to approve an amount above their limit?
The action isn’t rejected outright - it’s quietly routed to the Approvals inbox for someone else with sufficient limit to sign off instead. Nothing is lost or blocked permanently; it just waits for the right approver.
What does it mean if a team member’s approval limit is left blank?
A blank limit means unlimited for that person, for that document type. Approval limits are per-member spending ceilings set individually in Settings → Team, one limit per document type.
Is Journal Entries a real feature, or just a read-only report?
It’s a real, fully-posting feature - you can create actual journal entries through it. It’s deliberately kept out of primary navigation because it’s a power-user tool, not because it’s limited or read-only.
Resources
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