The Books area
Your posted ledger in the sidebar - transactions, 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.
These are operational schedules only, not a trial balance and not financial statements. Your books of record stay in QuickBooks (or whatever system you told us about under Settings → Accounting); this area is the always-current, in-app view of the same entries.
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.
Chart of Accounts
Books → Chart of Accounts shows every account with its all-time balance. On Pro and up you can add custom accounts (expense or equity) for spending the built-in chart doesn't cover, rename them, and archive ones you no longer use (their history stays visible). Built-in account names are renamed here too - the same names the QuickBooks export uses.
Account schedules
Accounts are grouped the way an accountant expects: assets, liabilities, income, cost of goods sold, expenses. 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 under 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.
FAQ
Who can see the Books area?
Owners, Managers, and Accounting. Other roles see a note instead of the schedules, same as the QuickBooks export. Books used to be a tab under Reports; old links redirect here automatically.
Why is there activity dated before we started using AutoDealer.io?
Your history was booked once when the ledger launched, so opening balances and older ranges line up with the QuickBooks files you exported before.
An amount looks wrong. Can I edit an entry?
No, and that's deliberate. Entries only ever get added. Fix the source (the deal, the payment, the cost) and the ledger posts the correcting reversal and the corrected entry itself.