What ByteBook is, and what this handbook is for

ByteBook is a bookkeeping program for New Zealand businesses. It keeps the whole set of books in one file on the computer it runs on. It sends invoices, records bills and expenses, imports a bank statement and codes every line, works out the GST return, and produces the reports an accountant or an auditor asks for.

It also does something most bookkeeping programs do not. Every entry is sealed with a fingerprint when it is written, and the record can never be quietly changed: a mistake is voided, which posts the mirror image of the entry and leaves both in the books. Anyone can then re-run the checks and see for themselves that the books still add up. That is what makes ByteBook useful for training auditors as well as bookkeepers.

Why there is a handbook

Most bookkeeping training happens on a live client's file, or on a spreadsheet invented for the lesson. Neither is ideal. A live file punishes a wrong click with a real consequence; a spreadsheet does not behave like a set of books. It has no GST return, no bank reconciliation and no audit trail, so the parts that are actually hard to learn are missing.

ByteBook ships with twelve simulated New Zealand businesses. Each one sets itself up, trades for months, banks its money, files its GST and then has its books taken apart again from the raw rows. A hairdresser who is not registered for GST. A builder taking stage payments. A café. An online store issuing refunds. A landlord with exempt rent. A horticulture contractor on a six-monthly GST cycle. A pre-revenue software company. A dental practice with security switched on. You can run any of them, as many times as you like, on books that are thrown away afterwards. Nothing you do in training can damage a client's records, because there is no client.

This handbook is the course that goes with it. It covers the daily work — sending an invoice, coding a bank line, filing GST — and then the audit side, where the same books are checked the way an auditor would check them. Each chapter names the accounting or auditing standard behind the step, and each reference can be followed to the publisher's own document.

Who it is for

• New accounting staff. You will do the work in a business that behaves like a real one, where a payment arrives late, a bill is paid twice, and the bank statement does not agree at the first try.
• Audit staff in training. You will meet the fourteen procedures an auditor runs, learn what each one is for, and see what the exception looks like when the books are wrong.
• Students. Every topic here is a topic in a New Zealand accounting or taxation paper, seen from the inside rather than from a textbook.
• The person running the training. Every exercise has a marking note, and the twelve sessions in Part 5 can be handed out as they are.

Three ways to use it

1. Read it straight through. The chapters follow the order a month actually happens in: set up, trade, bank, file, report, then check.
2. Work through it with the program open. Each chapter has steps to carry out in ByteBook. The work is where the learning is; the reading only gets you to the right screen.
3. Use it as a reference. The glossary explains the terms in plain words, and every standard is listed in the reference index with the screen it belongs to.

What this handbook is not

Being clear about this saves trouble later.

• It is not tax advice. ByteBook works out GST figures from your own transactions and lays them out in the boxes Inland Revenue asks for. Whether a particular sale is taxable is a question about a particular business.
• It does not replace the standards. It points at them, quotes a few words where the words matter, and names the paragraph. Read the standard itself before you rely on it. Every reference in this handbook carries the address of the publisher's document and the fingerprint of the copy we read.
• It does not replace professional judgement. An auditor does not conclude from a tick list. ByteBook reports what it found and leaves the conclusion to the person; this handbook does the same.
• It is written for New Zealand. The standards referenced are New Zealand's: NZ IFRS, which carry international accounting standards with New Zealand additions, and the ISAs (NZ), which carry the international auditing standards with New Zealand additions. GST is a New Zealand tax.