Documentation main page Features Installation Administration Usage Developers FibuSQL login
The only thing required to use FibuSQL is a web browser (Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, MS Internet Explorer, Konqueror, Opera, etc.). FibuSQL is network based, i. e. it must be installed on a server (if this is not yet done, ask your administrator to do it with the help of the installation instructions).
The start address (URL) and the required login data you get from the person that installed FibuSQL. You should see the login page. If you land directly at the welcome page, the login data has been preset by the installer and you can skip the next two sections.
The actual data used in FibuSQL is stored in a database. Thus, you have to login to this database first. The person who installed FibuSQL should give you all information you need: the DB host (computer where the database runs), the database type (mySQL, PostgreSQL, ODBC, etc.), database name, user name and - if required - a password.
Normally FibuSQL uses the language set in the webbrowser preferences. If you want to explicitly set a different language, you can to that here. This form also allows the selection of the preferred number format (decimal and thousand separator); this format is used for every input and output of currency values.
Enter this data in the respective fields. Leave the password field empty if a password is not used. Clicking at "Login" should bring you to the welcome page. If an error occurs stating that the database connection failed, there is a problem with the login data or the access permissions from the database. Contact your administrator in this case.
If everything went well, you are directed to the start page ("Welcome to FibuSQL"). If you want, you can simplify the login process such that you do not need to enter all data again at the login. If you want to do this now, read the following section, otherwise you can skip it.
You can preset some or all login data if you want. Enter the data you want to preset as usual into the input lines. Attention: if you need a password, you shoud not enter it now if other people might get onto your computer! This would make the password purposeless.
Now, click at "Take over". This will lead to the login page again, but with your entered data preselected. Add a bookmark to the current page and use that for future logins.
If you have a password, this is the only thing that needs to be
entered in future logins. If none is used (or you did preset it
despite all warnings), the only thing you have to do is to click at
"Login". For this case, you can save even that: call the
bookmark editor and delete the part &setonly=...
(which should be at the very end of the address). Now, the bookmark
leads directly to the welcome page.
The first thing to do in FibuSQL is working out an account plan, i. e. which accounts you want to use (name, number, type) and what is the parent account of each. After FibuSQL is freshly installed, there is only one predefined account, the balance sheet.
Call the account definition page in the menu bar at the top of the page.
You can add accounts at any time, so it does not hurt if you do not have a complete account plan at the beginning. Equally, accounts can be deleted at any time under the condition that they do not contain neither subaccounts nor bookings.
To add an account, chose its parent account in the tree, enter the account specification (number, name, type) into the input lines below and click on "Add subaccount".
The database checks the consistency of the data quite thoroughly! If any error occurs (account already exists, etc.) the account is not created, instead an error message appears at the top of the page.
If an account should be deleted, choose it in the list and press "Delete selected account". Consistency is checked here, too: an account does not get deleted if it is not empty (so do not be overly anxious of accidentially breaking anything :-) ).
It is also possible to change the name or the type of an account: choose it in the list, enter the new data (leave a field empty to leave it as it is) and press "Change selected account". Be aware that it is currently not possible to change account numbers!
The menu entry "New booking" leads to the formular. Enter the required data (debit and credit account, value, description and time). The receipt number is optional. Please consider the following for the data fields:
The button "Book" commits the action and the journal is displayed (if no error ocurred).
The journal contains all bookings in reverse chronological order (i. e. the newest booking is on top).
You can sort the journal after any column by clicking at the respective column header.
If a booking should be modified or deleted, click at the description and click on "Delete" or update the input fields and choose "Change".
The ledger is automatically calculated and is always up to date. Thus, if you recently added, changed or deleted bookings, it may take a while until the page is displayed.
Ledger view starts at the balance sheet (root account) and offers the following navigation possibilities:
The standard sorting of the ledger is as follows: on top are the balances of all subaccounts (sorted after their account numbers), then all debit bookings and then all credit bookings in chronological order. However, you can sort after any column by clicking on its header.
To find errors it may be useful to show the cumulative balance after each booking (especially when sorting strictly chronological). Check the respective option box and click "Show" to do that.
Please pay attention to the fact that values that are to be considered "negative" (according to the account type) are displayed in red color on the opposite side of the account.
The button "XML export" leads to a form that allows exporting the current ledger account to an XML file. The radio button determines whether only the balances of all direct subaccounts or the whole subaccount tree is written.
To view the result in web browsers, an XSLT stylesheet has to be applied,
whose URL can be specified in the input line. Without such a stylesheet
browsers display this file only as a tree. The subdirectory xslt/
of the FibuSQL distribution contains example style files that can be used and
modified freely for your puropses.
This is an experimental feature; I appreciate any comments and proposals how to use and improve this!
Clicking "Generate XML file" causes the actual build and download of the file.
By clicking the button "statistics" you can get an overview over the development of an account over time. Currently, there is only a monthly overview. Let me know if you would like to have other figures.
Please consider the sign interpretation of asset and liability accounts. Since a revenue account is a liability, a negative change would normally mean a capital increase. Since this is very unintuitive, the changes and balances of liability accounts are negated to make the figures consistent with intuition.
Repeated bookings are created if one of the options "Every n days" or "Every n months" is selected in a new booking. This page shows all existing ones. Analoguous to the journal, the bookings can be changed or deleted by clicking at their descriptions.
Again, the sort order can be modified by clicking on any column header.
This page contains functions that are not necessary for the actual accounting (but are not less important, though). The page is described at its own documentation section.