The four ideas Nexto is built on — accounts and vouchers

In this part you won't fill in a single form. Instead you'll learn the four ideas the entire software is built on: the account, the voucher, debit and credit, and the reference currency. If you have never studied accounting, don't worry — this is made exactly for you, and by the end you'll probably ask whether that really is all there is to it.

What you will learn

• Why an account in Nexto is simply a ledger page — for people, tills, banks and even rent
• What a voucher is, and why every voucher always has two sides that sum to zero
• How to read debit and credit from the exchange's own point of view
• Why recording a trade does not move any real money yet
• What the reference currency is and why every report is measured with it

Step by step

Concept one — the account is a ledger page

Before software, exchange offices kept a ledger with one page per person: Mr. Smith's page, Mrs. Brown's page. An account in Nexto is exactly that ledger page — except it's no longer limited to people. Your cash box has a page. So does your bank account, your USDT wallet, even the rent you pay every month.

Open the real ledger from «Customers and Accounts» and you'll see them all side by side: more than a hundred customers, the banks, the cash box, the USDT wallet and the expense categories. Notice the status column too — an active account means its page is open for business.

Why that matters — money only moves between pages

Once everything is a ledger page, money only ever does one thing in this software: it moves from one page to another.

• Sold dollars? From the customer's page to the cash box.
• Paid the rent? From the cash box to the rent page.
• Sent a remittance? From the customer to your partner office.

Understand those three examples and you've understood ninety percent of the software.

Concept two — the voucher

Every time money moves from one page to another, the software writes a record called a voucher — just like the paper receipt you used to write after every deal. Every voucher has exactly two sides: one gives, one receives. They always add up to zero, because money never vanishes; it only changes place. This rule is called double-entry accounting, and the world has run on it for a hundred years.

To see one, open the list of trades — every buy and sell, with filters for date, currency and customer — and pick a trade. On the trade's page the summary at the top shows the type, the currency delivered, the currency received and the conversion rate. At the bottom of the page you open the accounting lines and see the voucher itself.

Reading a trade's voucher

Take a sale to Christopher Lee of just under three thousand US dollars. The customer received US dollars, so we owe them those dollars — that line is a credit. In return they owe us Canadian dollars — that line is a debit. The counterpart of both lines is the exchange's currency position account: our own stock of foreign currency.

Here's the point that surprises almost every beginner: at the moment you record a trade, no real money has moved yet. A trade is only an agreement — two promises. Money actually changes hands when you record a receipt or a payment. That is exactly why the cash box does not appear in this voucher.

Concept three — debit and credit

Don't memorise a rule; just always look at it from the exchange's side. Debit means this account owes us, or the money is ours — like the cash box. Credit means we owe this account: their money is sitting with us. So a customer who left funds with you shows a credit balance — and that is not something to celebrate, because that money is theirs.

Open a customer's statement and you'll see the balance in each currency at the top. If the US dollars show as debit, the customer hasn't yet paid what they owe in dollars. Below that sits every voucher of theirs in date order, and behind every number is one of those two-sided vouchers.

Why the cash box sits in debit

Open the treasury daybook and you'll notice the cash box is almost always in debit. That isn't strange at all: the cash box is holding our money, so by the very same rule, it owes us. Whenever you see the cash box sitting in debit, it means everything is as it should be.

Concept four — the reference currency

Your exchange works with dollars, Canadian dollars, euros and dirhams all at once. So when somebody asks how much profit you made this year, which currency do you answer in? Nexto picks one currency as the measuring stick — in this demo it's the Canadian dollar — and every report is measured with it.

The profit and loss report shows the profit of every traded currency pair expressed in that one currency. You choose this measure during setup, and after that you never touch it again.

Tips

• A trade is a promise, not a movement of cash; the cash box only appears when you record a receipt or a payment.
• If a customer's balance is in credit, that money belongs to them, not to you.
• Every currency has its own ledger, so a customer can be in debit in one currency and in credit in another.
• The in-app page help (the ? icon at the top of the page) has more detail on any field you're unsure about.

FAQ

Do I need to know accounting to use Nexto?

No. You only need the four ideas in this part: an account is a ledger page, a voucher is a two-sided record that always sums to zero, debit and credit are read from the exchange's own side, and the reference currency is the measuring stick for every report. The forms take care of the rest.

Why doesn't my cash box change when I record a trade?

Because a trade is only an agreement between you and the customer — two promises. The cash box changes when the money actually moves, which you record as a receipt or a payment. That's why the cash box does not appear in a trade's voucher.

My customer's balance says credit — is that good?

It means the customer's money is sitting with you, so you owe it to them. It is a normal state, but it is not profit. Read it from the exchange's side and it's clear: credit is what we owe, debit is what is owed to us.

Can I change the reference currency later?

You choose it during setup and then leave it alone, because every report is measured with it. Part four covers exactly when that choice is made and why it locks afterwards.