# Bookkeeping (BKG)
Navatom Bookkeeping records every vessel invoice, splits it across running cost categories, and routes it through review, approval and verification.

URL: https://navatom.com/products/bookkeeping
Category: [Accounting](https://navatom.com/products/category/accounting)
Runs on: Office, Supplier

## Overview
Navatom Bookkeeping is the maritime finance command center — giving fleet managers, accountants, and operations teams full control over expenditures, invoices, credit notes and cost allocations across every vessel in the fleet. It replaces disconnected spreadsheets, emailed invoices, and manual approval chains with a controlled, cloud-based financial management system that delivers real-time visibility from single-vessel cost tracking to consolidated fleet-wide reporting.
Built around a four-status expenditure lifecycle (Draft, In Progress, Verified, Cancelled) with dual-stage approval workflows (review + approval) and three execution methods (All, Any One, Not Required), the module enforces financial controls that scale from owner-managed single-vessel operations to global fleet management companies. Seven department cost centers (Crew, DPA, HSEQ, Operation, Purchasing, Technical, Training) ensure every transaction is allocated to the right cost category with full audit trail.
Distribution-based cost posting across each vessel's running cost categories, multi-currency invoices saved at the rate of their invoice date, and credit notes linked to their invoices provide the financial depth maritime accounting demands. Invoices start from goods receipts and dry-dock tasks, every change is logged with who made it and when, and three Excel exports and your own Word and Excel print templates make reporting effortless.

## Key figures
- 7 Expenditure Departments
- 3 Workflow Steps
- 4 Expenditure Statuses
- 3 Approval Methods

## Features
- **Distribution-Based Cost Posting**: Split a single expenditure across multiple categories using distribution-based posting. When an invoice covers costs that span different departments or budget lines — common in maritime operations where a single port call generates charges across multiple cost centers — the distribution system allocates amounts precisely. Each distribution line specifies the target category and the allocated amount. Distribution changes are tracked as dedicated event types in the audit trail, so you always know who allocated what and when. The system validates that distributions sum to the total expenditure amount, preventing posting errors, and each line then goes to its own category's reviewers and approvers.
  - Split single expenditure across categories
  - Amount per category line
  - Sum validation against total
  - Every split recorded
- **Multi-Level Approval Workflow**: Enforce financial controls with a workflow that separates review, approval and verification. Each category share of an invoice is reviewed and approved by the reviewers and approvers set for that category, and a user with verification rights then verifies the invoice. Your lists show what is waiting for your review, approval or verification, and what is waiting for others. Company settings can require every invoice to carry its categories and an attached document before it goes for approval. Three execution methods, All (every designated reviewer or approver must act), Any One (one action is enough) and Not Required (the step is skipped), let you match approval workflows to your organization's authority structure. Set them per category, so a category such as dry-dock repairs can require every approver while routine stores flow through with one.
  - Review, approval & verification
  - All / Any One / Not Required methods
  - What is waiting on you, listed
  - Per-category reviewers & approvers
  - Full approval audit trail
- **Invoices from Goods Receipts & Dry-Dock Tasks**: Let invoices start where the cost happens. When a goods receipt is posted at a vessel, one click creates a draft invoice in Bookkeeping with the vendor, currency, exchange rate, receipt amount and date already filled in, set to count toward the vessel's running cost. While it is still a draft, it can be canceled from the receipt. Dry-dock tasks work the same way. Add an invoice from a task and it opens as a draft for that vessel, listed on the task, so yard costs reach Bookkeeping and Running Cost without anyone retyping them.
  - One-click draft from a posted goods receipt
  - Vendor, currency, rate & amount prefilled
  - Counted in the vessel's running cost
  - Invoices added from dry-dock tasks
  - Listed back on the receipt or task
- **Expenditure Management**: Manage every financial transaction across your fleet through a unified expenditure system that handles invoices, orders, and payments. Each expenditure record captures the vessel, vendor, invoice and order dates, order and invoice amounts, prepaid, paid and unpaid amounts with a due date, the department and the people responsible, with the invoice and pro forma documents viewable beside it: everything your accounting team needs in a single, structured document. The four-status lifecycle — Draft, In Progress, Verified, and Cancelled — enforces a controlled workflow from initial entry to final verification. Expenditures move through stages with full validation at each transition, ensuring that only properly reviewed and approved transactions reach the verified state. Every status change is logged with user attribution and timestamp.
  - Invoices, orders & payments
  - Draft → In Progress → Verified → Cancelled
  - Paid, unpaid & due date tracking
  - Per-department allocation
  - Status-enforced transitions
- **Credit & Debit Invoice System**: Handle both credit notes and debit invoices within a unified system that maintains proper linkage between related documents. A credit note is added from its original invoice and carries negative amounts, with full traceability between the invoice and its credit adjustments. Every credit note references its source invoice, which lists its credit notes on a tab of their own, maintaining audit integrity. Because credit notes post negative amounts to the same categories, running cost totals per category and per vessel show the net position automatically. This eliminates the reconciliation headaches common in maritime accounting where credit notes often arrive weeks after the original invoice.
  - Credit notes & debit invoices
  - Source invoice referencing
  - Automatic net position calculation
  - Per-category & per-vessel netting
- **Multi-Currency Support**: Operate across currencies with built-in conversion rate management. Record each invoice in the currency it was issued in, reflecting the multi-currency reality of international maritime operations where port charges, bunker costs and repairs are paid in different currencies. When an invoice's currency differs from the vessel's running cost currency, Navatom fetches the exchange rate for the invoice date, you confirm or adjust it, and it is saved with the invoice, providing accurate historical cost records regardless of later rate moves. Converted amounts flow into running cost reports and the compact Excel export, ensuring consistent multi-currency accounting.
  - Invoices in any currency
  - Rate fetched for the invoice date
  - Saved rate per invoice
  - Historical cost accuracy
- **Seven-Department Cost Allocation**: Allocate every expenditure to one of seven predefined cost departments — Crew, DPA, HSEQ, Operation, Purchasing, Technical, and Training. Department-based allocation reflects the operational reality of ship management, where costs must be tracked and reported by functional area for budgeting and variance analysis. Each department serves as a cost center for fleet-wide financial reporting. Filter, sort, and aggregate expenditures by department to understand where money flows. Department allocation integrates with the hierarchical category system, giving you both functional and categorical cost visibility across every vessel.
  - Crew, DPA, HSEQ, Operation departments
  - Purchasing, Technical, Training centers
  - Fleet-wide department aggregation
  - Functional cost reporting
- **Your Own Invoice Templates in Word & Excel**: Print invoices in your own house style. Upload a Word or Excel template with placeholders for the vessel, invoice number, vendor, dates, order, invoice, prepaid, paid and unpaid amounts, currency and rate, categories, the people responsible and, for invoices from a goods receipt, the purchase order code, vendor reference and incoterm. Test a template against sample data before you use it, and retire old versions without deleting them. From any invoice, choose a template and print it in the template's own format or as a PDF, ready for management, auditors or the vendor.
  - Word & Excel templates you design
  - Placeholders for every invoice field
  - Purchase order fields included
  - Test with sample data first
  - Print as Word, Excel or PDF
- **Vendor Integration**: Link expenditures to vendor records from the integrated Directory, maintaining a complete financial relationship history with every supplier. Pick the vendor when you record an invoice, or add a new company on the spot if you are allowed to create directory companies. Invoices created from goods receipts arrive with their vendor already set. Filter and export spending per vendor across vessels, departments and time periods to identify cost trends, negotiate better terms, and consolidate purchasing across your fleet.
  - Directory-linked vendor records
  - New vendors added on the spot
  - Vendor set from goods receipts
  - Per-vendor filters & exports
  - Fleet-wide vendor consolidation
- **Hierarchical Expenditure Categories**: Organize your chart of expenditure categories into a hierarchical tree structure with parent-child relationships and cumulative budget tracking. Top-level categories define major cost groups, while sub-categories provide the granularity needed for detailed cost analysis. The tree supports unlimited nesting depth for complex organizational structures. Administrators build the tree once, in Running Cost's category setup: add top-level and sub-categories, move or import them, and set each category's reviewers, approvers and approval methods. Cumulative budgets roll up from child to parent, providing instant visibility into spending against plan at every level of the hierarchy.
  - Parent-child tree structure
  - Unlimited nesting depth
  - Cumulative budget rollups
  - Reviewers & approvers per category
  - Per-category currency & approvers
- **Excel Export & Reporting**: Export invoice lists to Excel in three layouts. The regular export gives one row per invoice with its categories listed, the flattened export one row per category share for pivot table analysis, and the compact export adds the converted amount and the running cost period of each share. Print any invoice from your own Word or Excel template, in the template's format or as a PDF, for management review, auditors and vendors. The combination of structured data exports and formatted print reports ensures your bookkeeping data serves both analytical and presentational purposes.
  - 3 Excel export layouts
  - Pivot-table-ready flat exports
  - Converted amounts & cost periods
  - Print from your own templates or as PDF
- **Expenditure Lists for Every Stage**: Work from lists built around the workflow: your own drafts and everyone's, the invoices in progress that wait for you and all of them, and the full expenditure list across your vessels. Whether you have hundreds or hundreds of thousands of expenditure records, each list loads instantly, with sorting and multi-column filtering. Advanced filtering lets you narrow results by status, department, vendor, date range, currency, category, and approval state. Seven Bookkeeping dashboard widgets put the same queues on your dashboard, so nothing stalls between review, approval and verification.
  - My drafts & all drafts
  - Invoices waiting on me
  - Multi-column filtering & sorting
  - 7 dashboard widgets
  - Responsive at any data volume
- **Comments & Collaboration**: Add, edit, and delete comments on any expenditure to create a communication thread between accounts payable, approvers, and management. Comments provide context that lives alongside the financial record — notes about invoice discrepancies, vendor discussions, approval conditions, or budget reallocation rationale. Every comment action is recorded in the event log with full user attribution and timestamp. Comments become part of the permanent financial record, providing the narrative context that auditors value alongside the numbers. Keeping the conversation on the record eliminates the need for side-channel email discussions about specific transactions.
  - Comments on every expenditure
  - Add, edit & delete with attribution
  - Audit-logged comment actions
  - Permanent financial record context
- **Complete Audit Trail**: Every action within the bookkeeping module is recorded in the expenditure's history. From creation and vendor changes to amounts, dates, currency and exchange rate, status transitions, credit notes, category distributions, reviews, approvals and uploaded documents, every change is captured with full user attribution, a timestamp and the value it set. The history gives a clear narrative of your fleet's financial activity, ready for management, auditors and external accountants.
  - Every change logged
  - Reviews & approvals recorded
  - Full user attribution per event
  - New value on every entry
  - History on every invoice

## Technical abilities
- **Lists That Stay Fast at Any Volume**: All expenditure lists load, sort and filter on the server, where currency conversions and totals are calculated too. The system stays responsive regardless of transaction volume or fleet size.
- **Dual-Stage Approval Engine**: Expenditures pass through separate review and approval stages, each configurable with three execution methods — All (every designated person must act), Any One (single approval sufficient), or Not Required (stage skipped). Per-category configuration lets you enforce strict controls on high-value items while streamlining routine costs.
- **Hierarchical Category Tree with Cumulative Budget Tracking**: Expenditure categories form a parent-child tree structure with unlimited nesting depth. Budgets roll up cumulatively from child to parent, providing instant spending visibility at every hierarchy level. The tree is managed in one place and shared with Running Cost.
- **Multi-Currency Conversion with Exchange Rate Snapshots**: Each invoice saves the exchange rate of its invoice date, fetched automatically and confirmed by the user, preserving accurate historical cost records. Amounts convert into each vessel's running cost currency, ensuring consistent multi-currency reporting across fleet-wide financial summaries.
- **Distribution-Based Category Posting**: Single expenditures split across multiple categories via distribution posting, with validation ensuring distributions sum to the total amount. Distribution changes carry dedicated event types in the audit trail for full traceability of cost allocation decisions.
- **Credit-Debit Invoice Linkage System**: Credit notes maintain referential linkage to their source debit invoices, enabling automatic net position calculation per category and per vessel. The linkage system preserves audit integrity across the full credit-debit document chain.
- **Complete Event History**: Every action across the bookkeeping module is recorded as a typed, timestamped, user-attributed event, from vendor and amount changes to status transitions, credit notes, distributions, reviews and approvals. The history sits on each expenditure for anyone with access to read.

## Benefits
- **Seven-Department Cost Visibility Across Your Fleet**: Allocate every expenditure to Crew, DPA, HSEQ, Operation, Purchasing, Technical, or Training departments. Filter and aggregate costs by department to understand spending patterns, identify savings opportunities, and report to stakeholders with functional cost breakdowns.
- **Multi-Level Approval Ensures Financial Control**: Dual-stage review and approval workflows with three execution methods enforce your organization's authority structure. Categories with high-value costs can require every approver while routine costs flow through with minimal friction, and every decision is logged for audit evidence.
- **Split Costs Across Categories with Distribution Posting**: When a single invoice covers multiple cost centers — common in maritime operations — distribution-based posting allocates amounts precisely across categories. No more manual journal entries or spreadsheet workarounds to split port call charges.
- **Financial Records with a Complete Audit Trail**: Every change is logged with full user attribution, so your financial records are always ready for review. Auditors and external accountants will find a clean, chronological record of every financial action.
- **Scales from Single Vessel to Global Fleet**: Lists that load and filter on the server, per-vessel category trees and per-category approvals mean the system works the same whether you manage one vessel or five hundred. Multi-currency invoices and per-category configuration handle the complexity of international fleet operations.

## Frequently asked questions
### What types of financial transactions does the module handle?
The Bookkeeping module manages expenditures including invoices, orders, and payments with both credit and debit transaction types. Each expenditure follows a four-status lifecycle — Draft, In Progress, Verified, and Cancelled — with full vendor integration, department allocation across seven cost centers (Crew, DPA, HSEQ, Operation, Purchasing, Technical, Training), and multi-currency support.

### How does the approval workflow work?
Expenditures pass through a dual-stage workflow with separate review and approval steps. Each stage supports three execution methods: All (every designated person must act), Any One (a single approval is sufficient), or Not Required (the stage is skipped). Reviewers, approvers and execution methods are set per expenditure category, so a high-value category can require every approver while routine costs flow through with one. After approval, a user with verification rights verifies the invoice, and your lists show what is waiting for you at each step.

### Can we split costs across multiple categories?
Yes. Distribution-based cost posting lets you split a single expenditure across multiple categories, each receiving a specified amount. The system validates that all distributions sum to the total expenditure amount. Distribution changes are tracked as dedicated event types in the audit trail, providing full traceability of cost allocation decisions.

### How does multi-currency support work?
Each invoice is recorded in the currency it was issued in. When that differs from the vessel's running cost currency, Navatom fetches the exchange rate for the invoice date, you confirm or adjust it, and it is saved with the invoice, preserving accurate historical costs. Converted amounts flow into running cost reports and exports.

### What is the Chart of Accounts?
A chart of accounts is the list of accounts a company records its finances in: assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses. In Navatom it comes with the finance modules. Bookkeeping today splits every expenditure across your own categories and departments, so spending is classified from the first invoice.

### Can we export financial data?
Yes. Three Excel exports are available: Regular (one row per invoice with its categories), Flatten Categories (one row per category share, for pivot table analysis), and Flatten Categories Compact (adds the converted amount and the running cost period). Any invoice can also be printed from your own Word or Excel template, in the template's format or as a PDF.

### Is there an audit trail for financial changes?
Yes. Every action is recorded in the expenditure's history, from creation, vendor and amount changes to status transitions, credit notes, category distributions, reviews and approvals. Each entry carries full user attribution, a timestamp and the value it set, giving a complete chronological record of all financial activity.

### Can invoices be created from purchasing and dry-dock work?
Yes. When a goods receipt is posted at a vessel, one click creates a draft invoice in Bookkeeping with the vendor, currency, exchange rate, amount and date already filled in, counted toward the vessel's running cost. Dry-dock tasks can add invoices too, and each task lists the invoices raised from it.

### Can we print invoices in our own format?
Yes. Upload a Word or Excel template with placeholders for the vessel, vendor, dates, amounts, categories and, for invoices from a goods receipt, the purchase order details. Test it with sample data, then print any invoice through it in the template's own format or as a PDF.

### Who verifies an invoice?
After each category share is reviewed and approved by that category's reviewers and approvers, a user granted the right to verify expenditures checks the whole invoice and verifies it. Your lists and dashboard widgets show what is waiting for your verification.

## Related modules
- [Running Cost](https://navatom.com/products/running-cost): Plan each vessel's operating budget by category and compare it with verified invoices.
- [Procurement](https://navatom.com/products/procurement): Streamline purchasing workflows from requisition to delivery with supplier integration.
- [Directory](https://navatom.com/products/directory): Centralized contact directory for vendors, suppliers, class societies, and stakeholders.

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