One more thing - I think it's enlightening to, at least once, build financial statements from a set of transactions, and then to dig back from the summary, to t

One more thing - I think it's enlightening to, at least once, build financial statements from a set of transactions, and then to dig back from the summary, to the original transactions, i.e. 1. Export all the transactions from your accounting software (from the start of time, to the end of last month). 2. Export the chart of accounts from your accounting software. 3. Load these into two separate tabs in Excel. 4. Add a column to #1, that maps the account to the relevant account type (e.g. 'assets') and statement (BS or P&L), using #2 as a lookup table. 5. Create a pivot table from #1, to create a balance sheet. 6. Create another pivot table from #1, but this time use time (month or year) as a dimension. 7. See if you can relate some of the balance sheet and P&L values from your spreadsheet, with the values on the statements produced by your accounting software. 8. Assuming they match, go back to the balance sheet pivot table and double-click on one of the non-zero values. You will see a history of every transaction that changed that account.