Bookkeeping is Catlog's built-in financial management system. It gives you a clear, real-time picture of how your business is actually performing — not just how many orders you're getting, but whether those orders are making you money.
Once you enable bookkeeping, every sale, expense, and payment you record starts contributing to a financial picture of your business. You don't need an accountant or a separate tool. Everything is connected — your orders, your costs, your debts, your income — and Catlog ties it all together automatically.
What Bookkeeping Unlocks
At its core, bookkeeping on Catlog does three things:
Tracks money in — from sales, partial payments, and other income sources
Tracks money out — through expenses, refunds, and debts you owe
Shows you the difference — your actual profit, not just your revenue
This means when a customer places an order, you're not just recording that the order happened. You're recording what it cost you to fulfill it, what the customer paid, and whether there's any outstanding balance.
The Moving Parts
Bookkeeping on Catlog is made up of several connected modules. Here's a short overview of each:
Orders & Sales
When an order is paid — fully or partially — it becomes a sale. From that point, Catlog tracks the financial breakdown: what you earned, what it cost you, your profit per item, and any outstanding customer debt.
Expenses
Anything you spend money on to run your business. Expenses can be created manually, linked to withdrawals, or generated automatically — like when you create a delivery order. Each expense can be fully or partially paid.
Customer Debts
When a customer doesn't pay in full, a debt is automatically created. You can track what they owe, send reminders, set up installment plans, and record payments as they come in.
Merchant Debts
Money your business owes to others — suppliers, contractors, or anyone you haven't fully paid. These are tracked separately from customer debts and feed into your overall financial picture.
Adjustments
Post-payment changes to orders — refunds and replacements. When something goes wrong with an order after it's been paid, adjustments let you handle it cleanly without breaking your financial records.
Inventory Purchases
When you restock products, recording the purchase updates your stock levels and automatically recalculates your cost price using a weighted average. This keeps your profit calculations accurate over time.
Supplies & Bill of Materials
For businesses that make their own products, supplies are the raw materials that go into each item. Link supplies to products and Catlog will automatically deduct stock when orders are placed.
Other Income
Money that comes into your business outside of sales — grants, transfers, consulting fees, or anything else. This keeps your total income picture complete.
Notes
A flexible note-taking system woven into every part of bookkeeping. Add notes to orders, debts, and expenses — with optional reminders so nothing falls through the cracks.
Analytics
A suite of financial reports covering your sales performance, expenses, debts, storefront behavior, and overall cash flow. Designed to give you answers, not just numbers.
Before You Enable Bookkeeping
To get started, you'll need to add cost prices to your products. Cost price is the amount it costs you to produce or purchase each item you sell — and it's the foundation of every profit calculation on Catlog.
When you enable bookkeeping for the first time, a setup wizard will walk you through adding cost prices across your catalogue. You can apply a single price to everything, group products by price, or go product by product.
Once that's done, bookkeeping is live — and every sale from that point forward will have a full financial breakdown attached to it.
💡 Bookkeeping works best when it reflects your real business. The more accurately you record your costs, debts, and income, the more useful the numbers become.