SM Space · Accounting & Finance
Accounting & Financial Management Software
SM Space Accounting is the accounting software inside the SM Space ERP system. It holds your general ledger, budgets, bank reconciliation and month-end close in one place. Every invoice, purchase order and pay run posts into the same set of books on its own, so nobody re-types last month’s numbers from one system into another.
One set of books for every company you run, in every currency you trade in.
Last updated: September 2026
- Invoice
- Purchase order
- Pay run
- Trial balance
- P&L · Balance sheet
One ledger, with everything posting into it
Sales, purchasing, stock, the bank, payroll, assets and tax all write to the same books. Below is one transaction making the whole trip — checked, posted, and out the other side as statements.
- Sales Invoice → Accounts receivable → Revenue
- Procurement Supplier invoice → Accounts payable → Expense
- Inventory Goods receipt → Inventory → Cost of sales
- Banking Payment → Cash at bank → Reconciliation
- Payroll Pay run → Salary expense → Payroll liability
- Fixed assets Asset → Depreciation → Accumulated depreciation
- Tax Tax code → Sales tax payable → Return
General ledger
- Journals
- Dimensions
- Budgets
- Currencies
- Reconciliation
- Period close
- Current period Sep 2026
- Period Open
- Days to close 5
Invoice $25,000 from Sales
- Period open
- Dimension valid
- Dr Accounts receivable 25,000
- Cr Revenue 25,000
Debits equal credits Posted
- Revenue +25,000
- Accounts receivable +25,000
-
Trial balance
Dr = Cr
- Every account listed
- Both sides agree
-
Profit & loss
Net profit $185K
- Revenue
- Cost of sales
- Gross profit
- Operating expense
- Net profit
-
Balance sheet
Assets $3.4M
- Assets
- Liabilities
- Equity
-
Cash flow
Cash $520K
- Operating
- Investing
- Financing
Above: an invoice posting to the ledger; a posting run in simulation that writes nothing; a budget checked before the order exists; and a margin change traced back to the two entries that caused it.
What you can do
- Keep one set of books that sales, purchasing, inventory, payroll and fixed assets all post into automatically
- Check a spend against its budget before it becomes an order, and block it if it breaks one
- Reconcile the bank by matching statement lines to entries, with the unmatched ones left on screen
- Close a month through a checklist, then lock it so nobody can post into it afterwards
- Close a year, post the profit to retained earnings and carry the balance-sheet balances into the new one
- Combine several companies into one set of group numbers, with the sales between them cancelled out
- Post in one currency and report in another, and revalue what you hold when the rate moves
- Tag every line by department, project, cost centre or any other dimension you set up
- Run a trial balance from live data, and build a P&L or balance sheet from your own row definitions
- See who posted what and when — every posted entry keeps its history
Watch one invoice reach the ledger
Nobody types this. The invoice is raised in sales, and the journal below is what lands in the books — balanced, tagged, and on the trial balance straight away.
- 1100 Accounts receivable 1,240.00
- 4000 Sales revenue 1,120.00
- 2200 Sales tax payable 120.00
- Totals 1,240.00 1,240.00
01
General Ledger and Chart of Accounts
You get one chart of accounts and one journal. Every other part of SM Space writes into it instead of keeping its own private ledger, which is why the trial balance is the trial balance and not one of four opinions.
A pay run posts wages, employer tax and the bank side as a single balanced journal, tagged to the department each employee belongs to. A supplier invoice does the same thing from purchasing. If the debits and credits do not agree, the entry does not post — you get a message naming the line that broke it, not a silent difference you find in March.
Accounts carry a type, a normal balance and effective dates, so an account you retired in June stops being offered in July.
| Code | Account | Type | Normal | Department | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | Cash at bank | Asset | Debit | — | Active |
| 4000 | Sales revenue | Income | Credit | Sales | Active |
| 5100 | Wages | Expense | Debit | Operations | Active |
| 6200 | Print advertising | Expense | Debit | Marketing | Retired |
The retired account is no longer offered on new entries
02
Budgets and Spend Controls
You set a budget by account and period, then a rule that says what happens when someone goes past it: warn them, block it, or send it for a second approval.
Marketing has $50,000 for the quarter and has spent $44,000. A request for $8,000 is refused before it is an order — nothing recorded, nothing committed. Asking costs nothing: the preview leaves no record behind.
A budget is held per period, so a request that cannot be placed in a period is refused rather than quietly checked against the wrong one. Put your own numbers in the panel — it answers the same way the real check does.
- $
- $
- $
- Would reach
- $52,000
Nothing recorded — change the amount and check again
03
Month-End and Year-End Close
A close is a run with a checklist attached. Each task is started, completed, blocked or skipped by a named person, and the run is submitted, approved, and only then closed.
Close March, and a claim dated 28 March is refused instead of quietly reopening the month. If you genuinely need it back, you raise a reopen request, someone approves it, and it gets re-closed — so the reopening is on the record.
Year end works the same way: calculate, post the result to retained earnings, and run the carry-forward that brings your balance-sheet balances into the new year’s opening period. A year-end post can be reversed if the numbers were wrong before you sign off.
- Post recurring journals Priya N. Complete
- Reconcile bank Dan O. Complete
- Run depreciation Priya N. Complete
- Match inter-company Dan O. Blocked
- Revalue foreign currency Unassigned Not started
3 of 5 complete · cannot be submitted while a task is blocked
Refused — March is closed. Reopening it took a request, an approval from Priya N., and a re-close, all on the record.
Month-end, before and after
What we usually find
- The same invoice keyed into two systems, a week apart
- A spreadsheet per reconciliation, emailed round for comments
- Nobody sure which version of the checklist is the current one
- The month quietly reopened to squeeze in a late expense claim
With SM Space
- Raised once in sales, already in the ledger and tagged to a department
- A reconciliation run, with the items that disagree still on screen
- One close run, every task owned, started and completed by a named person
- A reopen request that someone has to approve, and that stays on the record
04
Bank Reconciliation
You load the statement, run auto-match, and deal with what is left.
A $1,240 deposit matches the invoice payment on its own. The two lines that don’t match stay on screen until someone matches them by hand or explains them — and you can unmatch anything that was paired wrongly. The reconciliation cannot be completed while a difference is unexplained, so “reconciled” means reconciled.
The same shape covers the accounts you can’t tick by eye: there are reconciliation runs for supplier balances, customer balances, payroll, inventory, fixed assets and inter-company, each listing the items that disagree and who resolved them.
- 02 Mar Deposit — INV-1043 $1,240.00 Matched
- 05 Mar Card processing fee −$38.50 Matched
- 11 Mar Transfer in $6,000.00 Unmatched
- 18 Mar Direct debit — ref 8812 −$412.00 Unmatched
Complete is greyed out until the difference is nil
- Suppliers
- Customers
- Payroll
- Inventory
- Fixed assets
- Inter-company
Payables, receivables and fixed assets
The ledger does not re-own these. Each one is owned where the work happens, and posts into these books — which is why payables, receivables and asset balances are lines on the same trial balance, tagged to the same departments, and closed on the same period calendar.
- Accounts payable
- Supplier invoices, payments and returns are raised and approved in purchasing and procurement. Posting one writes the journal here, and what is still owed — to whom, and since when — is read off the payables control account on that journal rather than kept in a second list that can disagree with it.
- Accounts receivable
- The customer side is the same shape from sales and invoicing: invoices and credit notes post here, open items come off the receivables control account, and a write-off is its own entry rather than an edit to the invoice.
- Fixed assets
- Machines and their values are held in asset and equipment management, against these same accounts, books and period calendar — so an asset’s cost and the ledger’s asset balance are two views of one number, not two numbers.
One consequence worth knowing, because it is the thing most systems get wrong: paying an invoice posts nothing on its own. The invoice already credited the payables control account and the payment already debited it, so matching them moves nothing. What does post is only the accounting the settlement creates — an early-payment discount, withholding tax, or the exchange difference you actually realised. Post the payment twice and you would double the control account; this way you cannot.
From these books you run a trial balance on live data, and build a profit and loss or a balance sheet from your own row definitions — the financial statements come out of the same rows everything posted into.
Four things most accounting systems can’t show you
Not features on a list — behaviours. Each one below is what actually happens in SM Space.
What moved this number?
Click a balance and it opens into the real journal lines behind it — each one ending at its document, not at another summary.
- 01 Mar Opening balance 177,530.50
- 02 Mar INV-1043 · Northwind Ltd JE-00918 +1,240.00
- 05 Mar Card processing fee JE-00931 −38.50
- 11 Mar Transfer in JE-00944 +6,000.00
- 18 Mar Direct debit · ref 8812 JE-00959 −412.00
Post it and see — without posting it
Run your posting rules in simulation. The same rules that do the real work show you the journal they would create, and the ledger is left exactly as it was.
- 5100 · Cost of goods sold1,120.00dr
- 1300 · Inventory1,120.00cr
Same resolver as a real post. Nothing written.
A typo can’t quietly kill a rule
Most systems let you type a condition. One mistake and the rule simply never fires again, and nobody finds out until the numbers are wrong. Here you can’t type one.
amt > 5000 && dept = "MKTG"
Refused. Free-typed expressions aren’t accepted — and the message names the value that broke it.
Picked from what exists, so it cannot be misspelled.
One queue for everything that went wrong
A failed posting, a missing mapping, an entry aimed at a closed month, a rate that wouldn’t convert — from any part of the system, they all land in the same worked list.
- Purchasing
- Expenses
- Consolidation
- EXC-0071 Missing mapping Purchasing High ×7 Ready for retry
- EXC-0072 Closed period Expenses Medium ×1 Open
- EXC-0073 Currency error Consolidation Critical ×2 Investigating
The same failure happening again doesn’t make a second row — it counts up on the one that’s already there, and keeps who it is assigned to.
What is the re-typing costing you?
Your figures, your estimate. Change any of the three and the sum below changes with it.
Time spent keying the same thing in twice
26.7 hours a month
That is 8.5 working weeks a year, at 37.5 hours a week.
400 documents × 4 minutes × 1 extra system = 1,600 minutes a month
Show me where it goes insteadHow it fits with the rest of SM Space
Finance stops being a re-typing job. The invoice raised in sales and invoicing is already in the ledger by the time you look for it, tagged to the right department, and so is the bill approved in purchasing and procurement, the stock movement in inventory management and the pay run in payroll. What lands in the books is driven by rules you can read and change, not by code. From there, reporting and dashboards reads the same live data, and audit and compliance keeps the trail of who changed what.
- Sales & invoicing posts
- Purchasing posts
- Inventory posts
- Payroll posts
- Fixed assets posts
- Expenses posts
- reads Reporting & dashboards
- reads Audit & compliance
- Multi-company Separate books per legal entity, consolidated into group numbers.
- Multi-currency Transaction, functional and reporting currency, with revaluation.
- Cloud Runs in a web browser, nothing to install.
- Customisable screens Fields, labels and layouts are configured per company, not coded.
- Audit trail Every posted entry keeps who did it, when, and what it was before.
Who it’s for
Small and mid-sized businesses that have outgrown a bookkeeping tool. You’ve got more than one company, or more than one currency, and your current system can’t tell you which department or project the money went to. You are closing the month in a spreadsheet, and you’d like the invoice, the purchase order and the pay run to reach the ledger without anyone keying them in twice. SM Space is a cloud ERP system — it runs in a web browser, with no server to install. It is built and supported by Smart Milestones.
Frequently asked questions
- What does SM Space Accounting do?
- It keeps your general ledger, budgets, bank reconciliation, and month-end and year-end close in one system. Every other part of SM Space — sales, purchasing, inventory, payroll, fixed assets — posts into that ledger automatically, against one chart of accounts and one open/closed period calendar, tagged with the departments or projects you set up.
- Can I run more than one company in the same system?
- Yes. Each company is a legal entity with its own books, and you can combine them into one set of group numbers. A consolidation run collects each company's balances, maps them to the group chart, translates the currency, cancels out the sales between your own companies, works out the minority share and goes for approval.
- Does it handle multiple currencies?
- Yes. You post in the currency of the transaction, hold the books in your functional currency, and report in a third if you need to. Exchange rates are held per rate type, and a revaluation run reprices what you hold when the rate moves — with the gain or loss posted as its own reversible journal.
- How does month-end close work?
- You open a close run for the period and work through its checklist. Each task is started, completed, blocked or skipped by a named person, and reconciliation and posting checks are linked in so you can see what's outstanding. The run is submitted, approved, then closed — and after that, nothing can post into that month.
- Can I stop people spending over budget?
- Yes. A budget control rule says what happens when a spend would take an account past its budget for the period: warn, block, or require a second approval. Buyers can check a request against the budget before it becomes an order, and every real check is written down, including any override.
- Does it replace my bookkeeping software or work alongside it?
- It replaces it. The point of SM Space Accounting is that the ledger sits under the rest of the business rather than beside it — if invoices and bills still live in another tool, you are back to exporting and re-keying. Journals and opening balances can be imported when you move across.
See your own numbers in it.
Book a 30-minute demo and we’ll load a month of your real transactions.
Book a 30-minute demo