Easy Setup

Easy Setup

Easy Setup

Reading Time: 10 minutes

A quick and easy setup process means you can make the switch today. Our support teams are on hand to help you start your journey toward positive business transformation. Unlike our competitors (QuickBooks, Sage, Xero, etc.) we strive to make the small business accounting experience a more personal one and are dedicated to helping you tap into your business potential.

Sign Up

Registration Process

Upon searching up fastaccounts.io in your browser (i.e. chrome, edge, firefox, etc.) you will land on the homepage of our website. By pressing the “Free Trial” button, you will be taken to the registration page, where by filling out some basic information you will begin your journey towards business transformation with FastAccounts:

  • Business Name – The registered name of your business.
  • First Name – Your legal first name
  • Last Name – Your legal last name.
  • Email Address – The email address you’d like our emails to be sent to.
  • Mobile – The mobile number you’d like our calls to be directed to.

After filling out the above information, you will be required to complete the reCAPTCHA to ensure you aren’t a robot.

After completing these steps, press the “Create New Account” button and the process of joining is that easy.

You should see a message indicating that your company has been added successfully and that an email should be reaching your inbox within 5 minutes to set up your password.

Once you have received the email, you will see a button labelled “Set Up Password”, alternatively you can copy and paste the link below the button into a browser. Upon pressing the button, you will be taken to the “Reset Password” page, where you can create a password for your account, be sure that the password you make follows the criteria highlighted on the page. Once you have created and confirmed your password, press the “Reset Password” button and you should find the page has refreshed and you have been taken to the login screen. Alongside this you will also receive an email with a button labelled “Login” and a link below that should you wish to paste it into a browser.

Now that you have created an account and password, anytime you search up fastaccounts.io and press the “Login” button, you will be able to use your new details to log in to your account and access FastAccounts.

First Time Logging In

When you log in to FastAccounts for the first time, you are greeted by a notification window with a help video. This help video provides you with a quick tour and setup overview of FastAccounts, to get you up to speed quickly. We would strongly advise taking a minute to watch the full video. Once you have completed watching the video you can then move on to the initial changing of your settings to ensure FastAccounts is working optimally for your business.

Initial Settings Changes

Upon logging on to FastAccounts for the first time, you will need to adjust a few settings to ensure that FastAccounts is optimised for your business needs. This will allow FastAccounts to make sure any data used is correct for your business as opposed to just the default. All you will need to do to access these settings is press on the settings icon in the top right of the screen and select one of the settings from the list.

Business Information

The first setting that we’d advise you to adjust is your business information. Pressing on the “Business Information” link in the settings menu will open a new page with a form that enables you to fill out the following business information so that FastAccounts can use this data later for system-generated reports, documents, and more:

  • Business Name – The legal name of your business.
  • Business Address – The location of your business.
  • Branch Name – The name of your particular branch.
  • Phone/Mobile Number – Your business’ phone/mobile number.
  • Email Address – The email address linked with your account.
  • Website Address – The website link for your business’ website
  • CNIC – Fill out your CNIC.
  • Sales Tax Number – Fill out your Sales Tax Number.
  • NTN – Fill out your NTN.
  • Student Alert Key – The key for your student alert account should you wish to link it to FastAccounts for added functionality.
  • Logo – Add your business’ logo.

Smart Settings

Make use of smart settings to set configurations to FastAccounts based on your business needs and style of operation. Pressing on the “Smart Settings” link in the settings menu will open a new page with a form that enables you to set these configurations as listed below:

  • Set Customer as Supplier
  • Projects Accounting
  • Warning on Over Sale (Invoice/Order)
  • Round Off Sales
  • Product for Late Payment Fine
  • Additional Charges/Deductions
  • Invoice Templates

Further to these configurations you also have the choice to set smart filters for the “Sales”, “Purchases”, and “Bank” modules, all of which can be done by scrolling down on the form and opening the respective tabs using the down-arrows.

Another major benefit to optimising FastAccounts using smart settings is that you can activate (default), deactivate, and set the Auto Serial No. starting value and the Code Prefix for the following:

  • Customer Auto Account No.
  • Supplier Auto Account No.
  • Product Auto Code
  • Location Auto Code
  • Project Auto Code
  • WHT Auto Code
  • GST Auto Code
  • Nominal Auto Code

All of the above-mentioned smart settings, when optimised for your business, allow FastAccounts to do the heavy-lifting for you, making the whole experience easy and simple.

Taxes and Year End

Adjust the rates of your taxes and the year-end date for your business, ensuring FastAccounts works around your schedule and business requirements. Pressing on the “Taxes and Year End” link in the settings menu will open a new page with a form allowing you to fill out your business’ respective year-end date and tax options.

You will find that underneath the “Year End Date” selector, there are a few down-arrows for different tax options:

  • Tax Display Settings – Select what taxes you would like displayed on documents for suppliers and customers respectively.
  • Sales Tax Rates – Select and adjust the sales tax and additional tax rates for the regions in which you operate as well as the print label, region code, and tax code.
  • WHT Rates – Select and adjust the WHT tax rates and tax codes for your business, and assign each with a tax name.

Filters Management

Manage each smart filter for each of the modules and their respective tables. Find their names and IDs with a choice of actions for each of the filters in the action column of the list table. This can be accessed by pressing the “Filters Management” link in the settings menu and then selecting the filter using the select mode drop-down list.

Printing and Template Styles

FastAccounts makes use of templates for its system-generated documents, as a result by choosing from any of the “Printing” links in the settings menu you will open up forms that enable you to customise the data shown and the layout of this data in the chosen templates. You will see a preview of the template on that form. To alter the preview template, press the green “Settings” button found in the top right panel of the screen. This will open a menu labelled template settings, where you will find a series of tabs that can edit and customise your template. The following is for the case of an invoice, other templates will have a similar set of options, dependent on what template it is:

  • Style – Choose from a set of styles for each template with the choice of adjusting margins, page size, font size, and more.
  • Header/Footer – Select the information to be displayed and in what order. You can also edit the footer text and the text alignment.
  • Invoice Header – Select the information to be displayed as the header of the template and in what order.
  • Table Settings – Adjust a wide variety of settings for the table as well as the information shown.
  • Invoice Footer -Select the information to be displayed as the footer of the template and in what order. Make use of formatting options to customise the template to your needs, for example, to adjust the format of the footer signature of the invoice.

User and Role Management

FastAccounts allows you to manage your users and assign them roles with respective clearances for certain modules. The first thing you will want to do is add additional users, remember that for each subscription package you will have a certain number of users allowed. Should you need additional users, contact our support team. To add a new user, press the “User Management” link in the settings menu. This will load up a new page with a table for the list of users. This table will display the following information:

  • Name – Name of the user.
  • Phone – Phone number of the user.
  • Email – Email address of the user.
  • Type – The type of user (admin/user).
  • Role – The role of the user.
  • Status – The status of the user (active/inactive)

Alongside the above information, there is a column that will allow you a choice of actions to take regarding the user chosen. These actions are limited to editing or deleting the user.

Before you create a new user, you should first create roles to assign the new users. You can do this by either pressing the “Manage Roles” button or by returning to the settings menu and pressing the “Roles Management” link. This will open a new page with a table of roles. This table will show you the role ID, the name of the role, and the status of the role (active/inactive).

To add a new role, simply press the “Add New” button in the top right panel of the screen and this will open up a form. To create a new role just fill out the name, and use the tickboxes to select what rights to give that role access to. You can choose from a variety of options that cover every aspect of the software and of those options you can also select to what extent those rights should exist. Depending on the right selected, you can choose from the following:

  • View Only – Only view information on the chosen screen(s)
  • Modify – Modify information on the chosen screen(s).
  • Add – Add information to the chosen screen(s).
  • Delete – Delete information from the chosen screen(s).
  • Share – Share information from the chosen screen(s).

Furthermore, there are choices specific to the assembly module:

  • Finish
  • Print
  • Print Cost

After having created a role, you can return to user management by either pressing the “Manage Users” button or by pressing the “User Management” link in the settings menu. Upon returning to this screen, press the “Add New” button in the top right panel to open the add new user form. Here you can fill out the earlier mentioned information for users, while also being able to do the following:

  • Restrict via IP Address – restrict user access by IP address.
  • Active – Select whether the user is active or inactive.
  • Type – Choose whether the type of account is an admin or user account.

If you choose to make the linked account (new user) an admin, then the form is complete after that. However, if you choose to make the linked account a user, then you have a few additional options for selecting access rights:

  • Role – Select from your predefined roles.
  • Fixed – Select using the tickboxes whether the following are fixed for the user:
    • Sale Rate
    • Discount
    • RM
    • TO
    • Bundle Quantity
    • GST Sales
    • GST Bills
  • Bank – Select which bank accounts the user has access to, this includes cash on hand.

Chart of Accounts

View a table of your nominal accounts using the “Chart of Accounts” link in the settings menu. Pressing on the link will open up the chart of accounts table where you can view all your nominal accounts, their respective codes, and the actions you can take with each nominal account. These actions are limited to editing and deleting the nominal account.

To add a new nominal account, press the “Add Nominal” button in the top right panel of the screen. This will open a pop-up that will allow you to fill out the following information to create a new nominal account:

  • Category – Select what category of nominal account to create.
  • Section – Select which section the nominal account will belong to.
  • Nominal Account – Choose the name of the nominal account.
  • Code – Choose the code of the nominal account.
  • Description – Write a description of the nominal account.
  • Deduction and Charge – Select whether the nominal account is one with deductions and charges.

Note that the right side of the pop-up displays any existing nominal accounts and their codes once you’ve selected the category and section. This will help you when choosing names and codes, while also avoiding any repetition of nominals.

Email Settings and Sent Email List

Pressing on the “Email Settings” link in the settings menu will take you to a new page with a table listing the 4 different email settings that FastAccounts uses. You will see that for each of the 4 settings, there is an associated type, ID, subject, and name. Furthermore, you will see in the top right panel of the screen the remaining credits. The 4 settings shown in the table are as follows:

  • Sales Invoices
  • Sales Credit
  • Sales Orders
  • Purchase Orders

Pressing on the “Edit” button, found in the action column, will open the edit template screen. Here you can edit the subject and message of the email as well as pick a keyword for the email. Be sure to edit the template in the correct format to ensure that data is correctly pulled from your records.

The following are the formatting syntaxes for email templates:

  • Customer/Supplier’s First Name – {{first_name}}
  • Customer/Supplier’s Last Name – {{last_name}}
  • Your Business’ name – {{business_name}}
  • Invoice/Credit Number – {{invoice_no}}
  • Sales/Purchase Order ID – {{order_no}}

Lock Date

FastAccounts allows you to both lock and unlock user accounts linked to your business. This is a particularly useful feature for ensuring that businesses can lock the accounts of staff going on holiday or for staff that are on temporary contracts that get periodically renewed. Pressing on the “Lock Date” link in the settings menu will take you to a page with a table of user accounts. This table will show for each of the entries: the lock date, unlock days, auto-lock status, account creator, and account creation date.

Above the table, you can select a user account and set a fixed lock date or set the number of unlock days. After choosing the lock date or unlock days, you can then press the “Lock” button to set and save the account’s lock date or unlock days.

Should you wish to unlock an account, just select the account entry in the table using the tickbox column and press the “Unlock” button.

Furthermore, by pressing the “Lock Date History” button in the top right panel of the screen, you will find a table of the history of any account locking activities, the dates of any updates to these locks, and who made them.

Journals

Pressing on the “Journals” link in the settings menu will take you to a new page with a table of journals. This table will list all the journals you have added to your account, their IDs, the date associated with the journal, their reference, and their total. You will also see that there is an action column with the standard actions available to all entries in the table, these actions include the following:  view, edit, copy, and delete.

To add a new journal, press the “Add New” button in the top right panel of the screen. This will open a form that you can use to create a new journal. To create a new journal, fill out the following information in the form:

  • Date – The date associated with the journal.
  • No. – Attach a reference to the journal.
  • Nominal Account – Select the nominal account(s) linked to the journal.
  • Description – Fill out a description for each nominal in the journal.
  • Debit – Fill out the debit value for the nominal account.
  • Credit – Fill out the credit value for the nominal account.

You also have the choice of importing journals using the green page icon in the top right panel of the journals screen.