Having collected the appropriate expenditure and revenue data from within your organisation, you are now ready to enter the details into the software.

Introduction

Step two allows you to import your expenditure and revenue data from your organisation’s accounts. Revenue will show as positive in the table and expenditure will show as negative. You now have the option of excluding items from the list.

For example you may want to remove items that are not part of your core business, or items that are too small to have any impact on your TBL. Those items that you have chosen to exclude will not be carried forward onto the next page, which is step
3 Expenditure allocation.

Inputing data

There are two methods available for entering the data, typing and importing.

Typing

To type details simply use the mouse to click in the column required. For example, click in the Account Code column. The cursor will appear in the column allowing you to enter the information.

Press the TAB key on the keyboard to move to the next column are begin a new item entry.

Account Code: the item number used by your organisation.
Sub Code: the sub item number used y your organisation.
Description: a brief description of the item.
Amount: the amount is entered as either an expenditure or as revenue. To enter an expenditure item, enter the value as a negative number, that is -450. The software will automatically classify this as an expenditure item. Values entered as a positive number are classified as revenue items.
Include:

Importing

Your organisation's accountant may be able to provide you with the expenditure and revenue information in electronic form which can be imported into the software. Rather than entering each profit & loss item by hand, you can choose to import these details from a file. The file must contain the account code, the sub code (if one exists), a description and an amount. All items with a positive amount are considered to be income, and items with a negative amount are expenses.

The file used to import the data must be as a comma-separated values or CSV file format. This format is commonly used to export data in column format from software applications such as spreadsheets, databases and commercially available accountancy packages.

To import your expenditure and revenue information, select the Import button on the main menu.

From the Import Data window will open on screen. Locate and select your data file.

Once you have selected or highlighted the file, select Open to import the data.

Working with the information

Including: Expenditure and revenue data needs to be loaded from your company profit and loss. This data forms the basis for many of the calculations in the software. In order to make comparisons between the data in Bottomline³ and your accounting system, it is expected that all expense and revenue items will appear, even if some of them will not be allocated against sectors in the national accounts (possibly due to them being immaterial). Just because an item appears in the list of expenditure and revenue items does not mean that it must be allocated as part of the triple bottom line process - to remove an item from the allocation process, simply uncheck the Include checkbox that appears next to each item.

Sorting: to sort the information by column, move the cursor over the column heading. For example, description. The heading will be highlighted indicating you can use the column. Click the column heading to have the data sorted.

Displaying information: the default or normal display mode is to view all revenue and expenditures. However you can choose to view only revenue or only expenditure.

Towards the bottom left of the screen you will notice the All button. This button indicates the
display mode is set to view all revenue and expenditures.

To view only expenditure data, select the Expenditure button to the right of All.

To view only revenue data, select the Revenue button to the right of Expenditure.