A quick tour of Kontala

Everything in Kontala hangs off the navigation bar across the top of the app. There are seven areas. Here is what each one does, left to right.

The top navigation

• Tala - your AI accountant, and the first page you see after signing in. Ask anything about your books in plain English. See Tala.
• Contacts - the customers and suppliers you do business with. See Contacts.
• Money In - everything you earn: Estimates, Invoices, Credit Notes, Projects, and Products & Services, the catalogue your document lines draw on. See Estimates, Invoicing, Projects, and Products and services.
• Money Out - everything you spend: Purchase Orders, Expenses, Bills, and Bill Credit Notes. See Purchase orders, Expenses, and Bills.
• Banking - your bank accounts, statement imports, and transaction explanations. See Banking.
• Tax - everything that produces a return: VAT, Payroll, End of Year for a limited company, Income Tax for everyone else, and CIS if you work under the Construction Industry Scheme. See VAT, Payroll, End of Year, Self Assessment, and CIS.
• Reports - Dashboards, then the reports in four groups: Financial statements (Profit & Loss, Cash Basis P&L, Balance Sheet, Final Accounts), Ledger (Trial Balance, Account Transactions, Capital Assets, Audit Trail), Debtors & creditors (Aged Debtors, Aged Creditors), and People (Salary, P60, P45, P11D, Pension members). See Reports and Capital assets.

The account menu

The button showing your company name, top right, opens the account menu.

It holds your own name, which opens your profile, and Settings, Change Password and Logout. If you belong to more than one organisation, the menu starts with a switcher between them.

The Settings hub

Settings opens one page holding every setting, grouped:

• Your organisation - Company Details, Accounting Dates, Users, Integrations.
• Tax and VAT - VAT Registration, Self Assessment Settings, CIS, Pension scheme.
• You, not the business - My Details, sign-in and security, your tax breakdown. These follow you between organisations.
• Your data - Journal Entries, Opening Balances, Export your data.

See Account and settings.

Search

Press Cmd+K - or Ctrl+K on Windows - to open the search palette from anywhere.

It finds your contacts, documents and screens, including a few that are deliberately not in the menu because they are rarely needed, such as Stock write-downs.

The notifications bell

The bell in the top bar opens two tabs:

• Admin To-Do - bookkeeping that needs doing: transactions to explain, expenses to approve, overdue invoices to chase, a VAT return to file.
• Deadlines - what is coming up, such as VAT due dates and your payroll filing position.

Items disappear as you do the work they point at.

Why some items are missing

The navigation only shows what your permission level can reach, so a colleague may see fewer items than you. See User permission levels.

It also hides what does not apply to your business. A limited company has no Income Tax item, a sole trader has no End of Year, CIS appears only once you record a CIS role, and Cash Basis P&L only when you are on the cash basis.

Related

• What is Kontala?
• Set up checklist
• User permission levels