Is Excel enough for shop accounts, and how does it differ from real bookkeeping?

What each type of business must do

How a cash report differs from real accounts

A cash report records only money that actually comes in and goes out each day. It suits shops that sell mostly for cash, where cash received equals sales. Real accounts record every transaction on two sides. A credit sale is booked as both revenue and a receivable even before payment, and goods bought for resale are recorded as inventory, not as one lump of expense

So a cash report tells you whether more money came in than went out this month, but not your real profit, who owes you, whom you owe, or what your stock is worth. A month with heavy purchasing can look like a loss even though the goods are still on the shelf

Signs Excel is no longer enough

• You sell on credit and several customers owe you
• Your stock is valuable and you want true cost of sales and monthly profit
• You are VAT registered and output tax, input tax and stock reports must agree
• You became a company or partnership and send figures to a bookkeeper every month
• Your bookkeeper asks every month where a figure came from

If you stay on Excel, do it properly

• Enter income and expenses within 3 working days, not all at once at month end
• Back every line with a document such as a sales bill or purchase receipt, and file them neatly
• Keep personal and shop money apart, with separate bank accounts
• Total income and expenses monthly as evidence for your income tax return
• Back the file up off the computer, because one broken file loses a whole year of evidence

How to do it in the app

In GORINY, one sale is posted to the books immediately: revenue, output tax, cost of goods and, for credit sales, the receivable. Purchase bills and expenses are posted too. Output tax, input tax reports and financial statements are built from the actual transactions. Invite your bookkeeper by email to view the same ledgers and reports, with no files going back and forth. The program does not replace your bookkeeper; it makes sure the figures reaching them are complete and consistent from the start

Frequently asked questions

Does a small shop not registered for VAT need to keep accounts?

If it is a sole trader with income under section 40(5) to (8), it must keep an income and expense record under Director-General notice No. 161, which is the cash receipts and payments report

Can a company or registered partnership use Excel as its books?

It must keep books under the Accounting Act with a qualified bookkeeper. Excel can hold figures for the bookkeeper, but it does not remove the duty to keep books

With accounting software, do I still need a bookkeeper?

Companies and registered partnerships still need one. The software keeps the data complete and consistent, so the bookkeeper works faster

Sources

Checked against official announcements on 22 October 2026

• Director-General income tax notice No. 161 on income and expense records
• Revenue Department: how to prepare a cash receipts and payments report
• Accounting Act B.E. 2543 (Department of Business Development)
• Revenue Department tax invoice handbook

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