How Artho works.

Artho (artho.app) is a web application for running the money side of a small or mid-sized business. You sell from it, you buy stock in it, you record what you spent, and the books — a real double-entry ledger with a chart of accounts — are written automatically as you work. There is no separate "accounting step" and no monthly export to a bookkeeper.

It is multi-company by design. One account holds an organization; the organization holds as many companies as your plan allows. Each company keeps its own products, customers, staff, chart of accounts and reports. Switching between them is one dropdown at the top of the sidebar — the books never mix.

What a day in Artho looks like

• A sale is entered on Orders — items, quantity, discount, courier charge, tax. Stock drops, a receivable is created, revenue and VAT are posted.
• Money arrives, so a payment is recorded against that order. Cash goes up, the receivable goes down.
• Rent is paid, so an expense is recorded against an expense type. The type decides which account it hits.
• At 23:59 the daily balance closes itself, chained to yesterday, and the chart on Orders redraws.
• At month end you open Accounting → Reports and the trial balance already balances.

Artho fits a business with inventory, named customers, and dues — where "who owes me what" is a daily question rather than a year-end one. If every sale is anonymous and settled instantly in cash, a till app is enough. If half your sales go out on credit and get collected over weeks, this is the shape of the problem Artho was built for.

It is a poor fit for restaurants needing table and kitchen-order management, for businesses that bill by the hour against timesheets, and for anyone needing per-branch stock inside a single company — stock lives at company level today.

Design decisions worth knowing before you commit

• Nothing is deleted from the ledger. Editing a source document reverses its old journal entry and posts a fresh one. The audit trail keeps both.
• Books are per company, access is per person. A member can be scoped to two of your five companies and to only the modules they need.
• Amounts are integers. Journal lines are stored in minor units (paisa) as big integers, so floating-point rounding never reaches a balance sheet.
• The daily balance is a chain. Each day stores the previous day’s closing figure alongside its own, so a broken link is visible rather than silently absorbed.
• You are never locked out of your own numbers. Every report prints or saves as a PDF, and invoices and bill summaries print straight from the screen.

• Organization — your account’s top level. It holds the subscription, the companies and the member list. Created once, when you sign up.
• Company — one set of books: its own products, orders, staff, chart of accounts and reports. The dropdown at the top of the sidebar switches between them.
• Year — the selector next to the company dropdown. Orders, payments, expenses and balances carry a year and most screens filter to the selected one. It is a view filter, not a lock: accounting reports use real date ranges.
• Module — a permission key such as orders, products, expenses, accounting. Members are granted modules; the sidebar shows only what the member holds.
• Account — a line in the chart of accounts, for example 1100 Cash or 4100 Sales Revenue. Every journal line points at one.

1. 1Create your account at Sign up and verify your email. Your organization, your first company and its chart of accounts are created for you.
2. 2Open Organization and rename that company, or add the rest of your companies.
3. 3Set currency and fiscal year in Accounting → Settings. Do this before posting anything — currency locks once the first journal entry exists.
4. 4Migrating from another system? Post your opening balances in the same Settings tab: cash, bank, stock value, and what each customer and supplier owes.
5. 5Add your team on Organization, scoped to the companies and modules each person needs.
6. 6Add suppliers on Suppliers, then products on Products. Create product categories from the product form as you go.
7. 7Record the stock you already hold as a supply entry on Suppliers → Supply History, with unit prices — that is what seeds weighted-average cost.
8. 8Add expense types and payment categories on Categories, and map each to an account.
9. 9Sell. Open Orders, pick a customer, add items, choose cash / paid / due, save.

1. 1Open Organization and find the Companies card.
2. 2Type the company name and add it. A full chart of accounts is seeded automatically, so you can start selling immediately.
3. 3Upload a logo if you want it in the sidebar and on printed invoices.
4. 4Switch companies from the dropdown at the top of the sidebar. Every screen follows the selection.

How many companies you may hold is a plan limit — see Pricing. Older companies carry short codes such as MPBIAN; new ones get a generated identifier, which makes no difference in use.

Per-company settings

• Currency — the base currency of the books, BDT by default. Locked once postings exist, because re-denominating a posted ledger is not a settings change.
• Fiscal year start — the month your financial year opens. July by default, matching the Bangladesh fiscal year. It drives the period suggestions in the Settings tab.
• Logo — shown in the sidebar and on invoices.

1. 1Open Organization and go to the Members card.
2. 2Enter the person’s name, email or mobile. If they have no Artho account yet, set an initial password for them — they can change it later on Account.
3. 3Choose a role.
4. 4Tick the companies they may open. Leave the list empty to grant every company in the organization.
5. 5Tick the modules they may use. Leave it empty to grant every module.

Roles

Modules

Module keys map to sidebar sections: orders, products, customers, suppliers, employees, expenses, payments, returns, specimens, stocks, reports, settings, accounting, tax. A member with an empty module list holds all of them; otherwise the sidebar shows only what was granted and the API refuses the rest — the restriction is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the interface.

1. 1Open Products and choose Add Product.
2. 2Fill in name, selling price and opening stock. Photo and description are optional but appear on the product page.
3. 3Pick a category, or create one inline from the same form — there is no separate screen to visit first.
4. 4Optionally link a default supplier; stock entries keep it up to date anyway.

Price versus cost

• Price is what you charge. It pre-fills the order line and can be overridden per order.
• Average cost is what the unit cost you, held as a weighted average of everything received. You never type it — see Inventory valuation.
• In stock moves on its own: down on sales and specimens, up on stock entries and returns, and directly when you post a stock adjustment.

Open any product from the list for its movement history, current stock and cost. Categories group the catalog for reporting; they carry no accounting meaning — all inventory sits in 1400 Inventory.

Suppliers has three tabs: Suppliers, Supply History and Bills. A supplier belongs to the organization, so one vendor can supply several of your companies.

Recording a purchase

1. 1Go to Suppliers → Supply History and start a new stock entry.
2. 2Choose the supplier and the date.
3. 3Add each product with quantity and unit price — the price you paid, not your selling price.
4. 4Save. Stock rises, weighted-average cost is recalculated per product, and the ledger records DR 1400 Inventory / CR 2100 Accounts Payable.

Paying a supplier

Record it on Expenses with the supplier selected. Because a supplier is attached, the entry debits 2100 Accounts Payable rather than an expense account — the goods were already capitalised into inventory when you received them. The Bills tab tracks supplier bills with memo numbers, for reconciling against their statement.

Add customers from Customers with name, mobile and address. Customers are organization-level, so a retailer buying from two of your companies is one record with two order histories.

Open a customer for their full position: orders history, payment history, returns, and the outstanding balance, calculated as

outstanding = total ordered − total paid − discounts given − total returned

From the same page you can add a return, generate a yearly bill summary, and open any order’s invoice. This is the screen to have open when a customer rings about their account.

Orders carries three tabs — Orders, Expenses and Payments — plus the daily balance chart. It is the default landing page for staff.

1. 1Choose the customer, or create one inline if they are new.
2. 2Add products. Stock is checked live; the price pre-fills from the catalog and can be overridden per line.
3. 3Set discount (a flat amount off the order) and courier expense if you are charging for delivery.
4. 4Enter the memo number — your own paper reference; it prints on the invoice.
5. 5Pick a tax rate if the company has any configured.
6. 6Choose the payment type, then save.

Payment types

Editing an order re-runs everything: stock is restored and re-applied, the old journal entry is reversed, and a fresh one is posted. The reversal stays in the journal, so an audit shows what changed instead of hiding it.

1. 1Open Orders → Payments and add a payment.
2. 2Choose the customer, and the order if the money settles a specific memo.
3. 3Enter the amount, the payment method (cash, bKash, bank — whatever you set up), and a payment category if you classify receipts.
4. 4Add a discount here when you write off part of a balance as a settlement concession.

Two kinds of receipt

• Collection against receivables — the normal case. Posts DR 1100 Cash / CR 1300 Accounts Receivable. Any discount lands in 4300 Sales Discounts, so goodwill given away stays visible instead of quietly shrinking revenue.
• Direct receipt — money with no order behind it: owner capital, a loan, rent income, a commission. Give the payment a category mapped to an account and it posts DR 1100 Cash / CR <that account> instead. This is how non-sales income enters the books without faking a sale.

Payment methods and categories

• Payment methods are how the money moved — Cash, bKash, Bank. They are per company and act as labels for reconciliation.
• Payment categories are what the money was, and they map to an income, liability or equity account on Categories. Only direct receipts use the mapping; on an order payment the category is a label, because the entry must clear the receivable.

1. 1Open Expenses — or the Expenses tab on Orders — and add an expense.
2. 2Pick the expense type, write a description, enter the amount and date.
3. 3Attach a supplier if you are settling a purchase, or an employee if it is salary or an advance.

Where an expense lands

The debit account is chosen by one rule, applied in this order — the same rule for a new expense and for an edited one, so the two cannot drift:

Expense types

Create them on Categories and map each to a chart-of-accounts line — Rent to 5300, Utilities to 5400, an owner withdrawal to 3150 Owner’s Drawings. Unmapped types still work; they collect in General Expense, which is worth cleaning up before your first serious income statement. The Categories screen shows how many expenses and what total sit behind each type, so you can see which mappings are earning their keep.

Returns

Open the customer on Customers and choose Add Return, then pick the products and quantities coming back. Stock is restored and the ledger posts DR 4200 Sales Returns / CR 1300 Accounts Receivable, which reduces what the customer owes without touching the original sale. Revenue and returns stay separately visible on the income statement — a gross-sales figure that quietly nets off returns hides a real problem.

Specimens

A specimen is stock that leaves without a sale: a sample, a review copy, a demonstration unit. Record them on Employees → Specimens, against the employee who took them or the customer who received them. Stock drops, and the daily stock record tracks specimen quantity in its own column, so a shelf count that disagrees with the system has somewhere to point.

Invoice for one order

1. 1Open the order from Orders, or from the customer’s order history.
2. 2Open its invoice. It prints on A4 with your company logo, the memo number, line items, discount, courier charge, tax and total.
3. 3Download prints the invoice — pick "Save as PDF" in the print dialog for a file you can send by WhatsApp or email.
4. 4Share copies a link to a clean print view. It still needs an Artho login with access to that company, so it is for your own team, not for the customer.

Yearly bill summary

For customers who settle annually rather than per memo, open the customer and choose Generate Bill Summary for a year. It totals everything ordered, paid and returned, applies a settlement discount — flat amount or percentage — and produces a final balance you can print and send. Each summary is stored as PENDING or RESOLVED, so you can see which accounts are closed out.

Balance report

The daily balance chart on Orders exports a dated PDF of the period on screen — the document to hand someone who asks what the cash position did last month.

Artho keeps one balance row per company per day. Each row stores both the day’s closing amount and the previous day’s closing amount, so the chain is explicit rather than inferred:

today's balance = yesterday's balance
                + all payments received today
                − all expenses paid today

That makes the series a ledger in its own right. Because each row carries the figure it started from, a day that does not continue from its predecessor is visible on inspection instead of being absorbed into a running total.

When it runs

• A scheduled job closes the day at 23:59 Bangladesh time, for every company.
• Recalculating is safe and repeatable — a day can be recomputed as often as needed and lands on the same figure.
• A date range can be recomputed in bulk from the balance chart on Orders, which is what you use after back-dating an entry.

What it does and does not count

• Counted: payments received (all methods) and expenses paid, on their own dates.
• Not counted: unpaid orders. A credit sale changes your receivables, not today’s money; it shows up here when it is collected.
• This is a cash-movement view, close to a cash book. For accrual figures — profit, receivables, payables, stock value — use Accounting → Reports.

Accounting has five tabs: Chart of Accounts, Journal, Reports, Stocks and Settings. Nothing here needs feeding by hand — by the time you open it, the entries are already there.

Chart of accounts

Every new company is seeded with a complete chart of accounts, numbered the conventional way: 1xxx assets, 2xxx liabilities, 3xxx equity, 4xxx income, 5xxx expenses. Accounts nest under parents, so 1210 bKash rolls up into 1200 Bank, which rolls up into 1000 Assets.

Add your own accounts freely and archive ones you never use. Accounts the posting engine depends on are marked as system accounts and cannot be removed — without 1300 Accounts Receivable there is nowhere for a credit sale to go.

The journal

• Entries are numbered sequentially per company and carry the document they came from — ORDER, PAYMENT, SUPPLY, EXPENSE, RETURN, ADJUSTMENT, OPENING, MANUAL.
• Every entry balances. Debits equal credits or it does not post — there is no "unbalanced, fix it later" state.
• One posted entry per source document, so saving the same order twice cannot double-count it.
• Editing a document reverses the old entry and posts a new one. Deleting posts a reversal. The original stays in the journal either way.
• Manual entries cover what no source document does — depreciation, accruals, corrections.

Money an owner puts into the business is capital, not income. Money an owner takes out is a drawing, not salary. Recording either as an expense understates profit and misstates equity — a common and expensive mistake in small-business books. Artho keeps both in equity, where they belong.

Owner puts money in

1. 1On Categories, add a payment category — "Owner capital" — mapped to 3100 Owner’s Equity.
2. 2Record the money as a payment on Orders → Payments with no order attached, using that category.
3. 3It posts DR 1100 Cash / CR 3100 Owner’s Equity.

Owner takes money out

1. 1On Categories, add an expense type — "Owner drawings" — mapped to 3150 Owner’s Drawings.
2. 2Record the withdrawal on Expenses with that type.
3. 3It posts DR 3150 Owner’s Drawings / CR 1100 Cash.

At period close, profit moves to 3200 Retained Earnings. Equity then reads the way it should: what was put in, what was taken out, and what the business earned and kept, as three separate figures.

1. 1Open Accounting → Settings and add a tax rate: a name such as "VAT 15%", the percentage, the kind (VAT, sales tax or withholding), and the account it collects into — normally 2200 VAT Payable.
2. 2Decide whether the rate is inclusive or exclusive.
3. 3The rate then appears as a choice on the order form. Companies with no rates configured never see the field.

Inclusive versus exclusive

Either way the order stores its tax amount separately, and the sale posts revenue net of tax, with the tax portion credited to VAT Payable. Revenue is never inflated by tax you are only holding on the government’s behalf.

Filing

The VAT / Tax report in Accounting → Reports gives output tax for any date range. Paying it is an ordinary expense recorded against an expense type mapped to 2200 VAT Payable, which clears the liability rather than creating a new cost.

Weighted-average cost

Each product carries an average unit cost, recalculated on every priced receipt:

new average = (on-hand qty × old average + received qty × unit price)
              ÷ (on-hand qty + received qty)

• When on-hand is zero or negative the receipt price simply becomes the new cost — an old average with no stock behind it carries no weight.
• Selling consumes stock at the current average, and that is what lands in 5100 Cost of Goods Sold.
• The arithmetic runs in integer minor units, so the same receipts always produce the same cost.

Daily stock

Artho keeps a per-product, per-day record: opening stock, quantity sold, quantity received, specimen quantity, closing stock. That is the trail to follow when today’s number looks wrong — it shows you which day it went wrong on.

Stock adjustments

For breakage, loss, or a physical count that disagrees, post an adjustment in Accounting → Stocks with the quantity difference and a reason. Positive adjustments post DR 1400 Inventory / CR 5600 General Expense; negative ones reverse it, so shrinkage reaches the income statement instead of vanishing quietly.

Accounting reports

All of them take a date range or an as-of date, and print cleanly.

Operational analytics

• Income Analytics — total income, order count, total discount and average order value for a date range, plus a day-wise balance change heatmap: a calendar where green days gained and red days lost, so a bad week is visible at a glance.
• Orders — the daily balance chart with PDF export, and bulk recalculation for a date range.
• Customers — per-customer spend, payments, returns and outstanding balance.
• Categories — the count and total behind each expense type and payment category.

Opening balances

Moving to Artho from another system: use the opening-balance wizard in Accounting → Settings. Enter cash, bank, stock value, what each customer owes you and what you owe each supplier. It posts one balanced entry, with any difference landing in 3300 Opening Balance Equity.

Fiscal periods

1. 1Define periods in Accounting → Settings — they follow the company’s fiscal year start.
2. 2When a period is filed and final, close it.
3. 3Closing sweeps every income and expense account into 3200 Retained Earnings, dated at the period end.
4. 4A closed period refuses new postings. Anything dated inside it is rejected until the period is reopened.

That guard is the point: it stops a back-dated entry quietly changing a number you have already filed.

• Every organization starts on a 14-day free trial, with no card required.
• A plan sets the number of companies, the number of members, and the number of transactions per month — counted as journal entries across every company in the organization.
• The accounting and tax modules are plan features. Without them, those screens return a clear upgrade message rather than failing oddly.
• Current usage against each limit is on Organization, under Plan & Billing.

Billing is handled manually today: pay by bKash or bank transfer and the plan is activated within hours. Invoices are raised monthly and listed on Organization. Prices are on Pricing; if a limit does not fit your business, message us and we will size it.

• Passwords are stored hashed, never in readable form. Nobody at Artho can read yours.
• Sessions are signed tokens in HTTP-only cookies, so page scripts cannot read them.
• Every API call re-checks organization membership, company access and module permission on the server. Hiding a sidebar item is a convenience, not the control.
• Email verification and password reset use single-use, expiring tokens.
• Data is stored in a managed PostgreSQL database, encrypted in transit and backed up regularly.

Manage your own email, password and profile on Account. If your account predates email sign-in, add an email there — without one, self-service password reset cannot work.

Reports and summaries export from their own screens. For a full copy of your data, or for deletion, write to contact@shaitrish.com. The details are in the Privacy Policy.

Can I run more than one business in one account?

Yes — that is the core design. Each company keeps its own books, and the dropdown at the top of the sidebar switches between them. Your plan sets how many.

Do I need to know accounting to use Artho?

No. Record sales, receipts, purchases and expenses the way you already think about them; the ledger is written for you. When an accountant asks for a trial balance, it is already there.

Why does a cash sale still need a payment recorded?

The order creates the receivable; the payment brings the cash in. Keeping them separate is what makes partial payment, later collection and settlement discounts behave correctly instead of being special cases.

What happens if I edit or delete something?

The original journal entry is reversed and, on an edit, a fresh one is posted. Both stay in the journal. Stock is restored and re-applied to match.

Can my accountant get read-only access?

Yes. Add them on Organization with the VIEWER role, scoped to the companies they handle.

Does Artho work on a phone?

Yes — it runs in the browser on phones, tablets and desktops. Order entry and lookups work well on a phone; reports and accounting screens are easier on a larger screen.

Can I use a currency other than BDT?

Yes. Set the company currency before posting anything; it locks once entries exist. Exchange rates are stored per company for foreign-currency amounts.

What happens to my data if I stop paying?

The account becomes read-only. Nothing is deleted for non-payment, and you can export or request a copy at any time.

Is there an API?

The application runs on an authenticated internal API. A documented public API is not open yet — if you need an integration, write to us and we will talk it through.

How do I get help?

WhatsApp or email — both are at the foot of every page, answered during business hours Bangladesh time. A live walkthrough on your own data can be booked the same way.