Cash book template: a useful tool for book­keep­ing

The cash book is one of the most important ac­count­ing books for corporate book­keep­ing. In the form of a simple document, often an Excel spread­sheet, the cash book is used to record a company’s cash payments. After all, if the annual financial state­ments are due at the end of the fiscal year, the IRS doesn’t only want to see the trans­ac­tions done via debit or credit, but also a list of all cash trans­ac­tions.

Keeping a cash book helps ensure that this list is complete. Cor­res­pond­ing templates are a great help. The advantage of a digital cash book format using an Excel spread­sheet: It’s quick, clear, and the entered amounts are auto­mat­ic­ally offset against each other. In this way, digital cash book templates offer a direct overview of the financial situation of a company and spare the need for time-consuming cal­cu­la­tions – where errors can easily creep in.

A cash book template also has ad­vant­ages for all self-employed in­di­vidu­als – re­gard­less of whether you’re obligated to keep a cash book or not. Simply download the cor­res­pond­ing blank cash book template online. In the following, you’ll find a template for your cash book as well as all important in­form­a­tion about how to fill it out correctly. But first of all, we explain who is actually involved in keeping a cash book.

Not everybody is required to keep a cash book – it’s only mandatory for busi­nesses that operate using double-entry ac­count­ing  and must prepare a balance sheet at the end of the year. There are no laws in the US governing how companies must keep their books, but double-entry ac­count­ing is strongly re­com­men­ded for larger busi­nesses and has its benefits for smaller busi­nesses as well. If you do choose to use this method, it’s important to read and comply with the US GAAP (Generally Accepted Ac­count­ing Prin­ciples).

Even if you choose to stick to simple ac­count­ing for your doc­u­ment­a­tion, it can still be logical to keep a cash book. As opposed to online business, cash payments are much more difficult to com­pre­hend in hindsight, and keeping an overview is ad­vant­age­ous for every company. With a cash book, you can keep track of inflows and outflows of cash.

When you submit your tax return to the IRS at the end of a fiscal year, the cash book is part of the company’s tax base. Like all other com­mer­cial books, the cash book must be kept in ac­cord­ance with the prin­ciples of trans­par­ency and com­pre­hens­ib­il­ity. To ensure this, there are some mandatory entries that each cash book entry needs to have.

Our down­load­able blank cash book template contains all the details that are necessary for a properly filled out cash book. The following in­form­a­tion is recorded in six columns:

1. Date of the trans­ac­tion
2. Receipt number for clearly assigning the document to the trans­ac­tion
3. Booking text (short de­scrip­tion of the trans­ac­tion)
4. Receipt and currency of the cash revenue or ex­pendit­ure
5. Applied tax rate (sales tax)
6. Current cash balance and debit balance

In the header of the cash book template, there are two ad­di­tion­al fields: one to enter the name of your company, and another for recording the time during which the re­spect­ive cash book sheet was kept. You then just have to put your signature under the table. All incurred income and expenses are doc­u­mented chro­no­lo­gic­ally. Here, the principle of com­plete­ness is very important. Even something as simple as the purchase of stamps – a classic cash payment – belongs in the cash book. One of the major ad­vant­ages of the cash book format for Excel: The program offsets the items directly with each other and auto­mat­ic­ally displays the current balance.

Once you’ve down­loaded the free cash book template, proceed as follows:

1. First, enter the name of your company in the header of the document.
    
2. Then make the initial entry for the time: If you want to start the cash book on the same day, note the current date. If you want to fill out the cash book sheet over multiple days (more likely to occur in ex­cep­tion­al cases), then enter the end date when the sheet is filled out. This way, you avoid incorrect entries.
    
3. The next step is to transfer the current cash balance into the table. This is given in the first row as the ‘Balance’: Here, note the current date and bash amount.
    
4. Now, begin to chro­no­lo­gic­ally log the cash payments of the day (or the period in which you’re keeping the cash book): The document number of the cash receipt, the date of the trans­ac­tion, and the amount of the income or ex­pendit­ure. It’s important that you enter each trans­ac­tion in­di­vidu­ally and that the number values can be read out correctly from the Excel table.

5. In the ‘Comments’ column, enter a short de­scrip­tion of the business trans­ac­tion, for example, in the form of a booking text. By the following day at the latest, you must enter all payments into the cash book template.
    
6. Under the table, on the right, the sum of incomes and ex­pendit­ures is entered and the balance is cal­cu­lated. Before you print out the cash book sheet, make sure once again that all values are correctly entered so that the final entry can be cal­cu­lated without errors. This will be trans­ferred as the starting balance on the next sheet.
    
7. In general, you should print out the cash book sheet at the end of every day. Check first to see whether the complete period of the document has been specified correctly in the header. You can attach your signature to the printed document and file it chro­no­lo­gic­ally with your other records. You can also save the sheets as PDFs.
    
8. On the next day, start a new cash book sheet with the saved template.

Important to note: Details in the cash book cannot be changed after being filed. To do so would be contrary to the prin­ciples of proper ac­count­ing. If you should encounter an error, the change needs to be iden­ti­fi­able and com­pre­hens­ible to third parties and marked with the date of the change – this is the trans­par­ency principle of the US GAAP. Therefore, it’s not suf­fi­cient to keep the cash book ex­clus­ively in digital form. To ensure that sub­sequent changes are traceable, print out the cash book at the end of the day, sign it, and file it chro­no­lo­gic­ally. This guar­an­tees that all ac­count­ing prin­ciples are main­tained.

In the IONOS Digital Guide, you can find further details on cash books and how to fill them out correctly.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.