Glossary

Terms that mean something specific in SimplyLedger, in the order they tend to come up.

Setup

Entity: one set of books. Every account, transaction and posting belongs to exactly one, and its ID is in the URL of every page. See choose an entity.

Entity code: a short immutable label of 2–6 uppercase letters chosen when the entity is created (for example SVC). It prefixes every public reference in that entity and cannot be changed later. See portfolio or accounting.

Public reference: the ID shown in the UI and used in URLs for accounts, token cards, postings and reconciliations. Format {ENTITY_CODE}-{KIND}-{seq}, for example SVC-W-1 (account), SVC-TC-2 (token card), SVC-P-3 (posting), SVC-R-4 (reconciliation). The # columns on lists show these, not internal database numbers. When raising a support ticket, quote the public reference you see on screen.

Portfolio mode: the lighter of the two entity modes: balances, charts, transactions and tracked tokens, with no posting, reconciliation, cost basis, reports or audit trail. See portfolio or accounting.

Accounting mode: the full set: posting, categories, rules, reconciliation, adjustments, cost basis, reports, audit trail and QuickBooks. An entity is upgraded to it by support, not by an admin. See entity settings.

Role: owner, admin, user, viewer or guest, held per entity. Decides both what you can change and which sections you can reach. See roles and permissions.

Accounts and tokens

Account: something the entity holds value in. Four kinds: an on-chain account (one address on one chain, so the same address on two chains is two accounts), an exchange account (a connected exchange), a custodian account (an on-chain address discovered from BitGo, DFNS or Fireblocks), and a fiat account (a bank account). All four share the Accounts list. See add an on-chain account.

Fiat account: a bank account, with no chain and no API. Its transactions come from a bank statement CSV import. See add a fiat account.

Custodian account: an on-chain address held at a third-party provider. One credential auto-discovers many wallets. See connect a custodian.

Report status: Active includes an account in reports, Inactive keeps it on record but leaves it out.

Tracked tokens: the tokens a portfolio entity follows. New accounts and exchanges get a token card for each one automatically. See tracked tokens.

Account tag: a coloured label applied to accounts, used to filter the accounts list and the portfolio. See account tags.

"Wallet" still appears

The section and its pickers were renamed to Accounts, but tables and CSV exports across the app still label the column Wallet, and the sidebar still reads Wallet Transactions for on-chain history. They mean the same thing.

Token: the asset itself: name, symbol, whether it is a stablecoin, and where its price comes from.

Token address: where a token lives on one chain: the contract address and its decimals. One token has many addresses. See tokens and addresses.

Native: a chain's own coin, ETH on Ethereum, which has no contract. Recorded as the address NATIVE.

Exponent: a token's decimals on a chain, used to turn a raw on-chain amount into a human one. Wrong by one and every amount is out by a factor of ten.

Token card: one token, or one currency, held in one account. The unit everything else hangs off: balances, postings and reconciliation are all per token card. See token cards.

Current balance and book balance: a token card's current balance is what the chain, exchange or custodian reports now. Its book balance is the total of its postings, so it exists only in accounting entities.

Closing balance: how much of a token a card held at the end of a calendar day. Collected on chain, synced from a custodian or exchange, or entered manually. See balance collection.

Fiat price: the stored FX rate for a fiat currency on a date, used to value fiat balances and transactions. See fiat prices.

Spam token: a token marked as junk, kept out of reports and the posting queue. Reversible. See spam, requests and fiat.

Available, delegated, unclaimed rewards: the three parts a token card's balance can be split into, recorded as its holding type. See holding types.

Delegation protocol: where a delegated token card's stake is held, recorded on the card so the staked balance can be read back from the chain. See delegation protocols.

Transactions

Sync: the ongoing pull of new activity into an entity, from block explorers and exchange APIs. Its queue is on the Historical sync page. See historical sync.

Historical sync: a one-off request to reindex an on-chain account over a past date range. Queued from the account page or from the historical sync page. See account details.

Reconciliation sync: a one-off request to re-check an on-chain account's balances for days that never reconciled against the chain. Queued from the same places.

Statement import: the bank statement CSV upload that puts transactions on a fiat account. See add a fiat account.

Order and trade: an instruction given to an exchange, and the individual fills that satisfied it. One order, many trades. See exchange transactions.

Pending transaction: a synced transaction with no posting yet. The posting queue is the list of these.

Discarded transaction: a pending transaction deliberately taken out of the queue without posting. Restorable. See discarded transactions.

Posting

Posting: one side of a ledger entry. Every transaction posted creates two: the account side against a token card, and the contra side against a QuickBooks account.

Contra: the other side of an entry from the one you are looking at.

Staging: putting rows in a basket before committing them together. Nothing is written until you post, and Unstage takes a row back out. See post a transaction.

Category: the classification applied to a posting, which decides the contra account and, through Use in cost basis, whether the posting counts towards cost basis. See categories.

Posting rule: a saved pattern that categorises matching transactions automatically. A default rule applies across the entity; a wallet & token rule applies to one token in one account and takes priority. See posting rules.

Grouped posting: a posting made from more than one transaction, listed under Reporting → Grouped Transactions. See grouped postings.

Revert: reversing a posting. The row stays, marked as reverted, rather than disappearing.

Accounts

Chart of accounts: the QuickBooks accounts imported into SimplyLedger, each given a type. See QuickBooks accounts.

Contra account: a profit and loss account, used as the contra side of a posting. Labelled PNL until recently, and still pnl in exports and the API.

Posting account: the account linked to a token card, which journal entries are booked against.

Hold account: where the unmatched leg of a swap or bridge waits for its other side. See hold matches.

Suspense account: a temporary account for movements that are not yet classified. Must be a QuickBooks Bank account, because bill and invoice payments come from it.

Suspense match: a link between suspense postings and the QuickBooks entity that actually settled them. See suspense matches.

Difference posting: the entry booking the gap between what SimplyLedger posted and what QuickBooks says, on a suspense match.

Forex account: where adjustments book foreign-exchange differences.

Opening balance: a token card's starting position, before any transaction. See opening balances.

Closing

Open draft: a reconciliation created but not yet finalised. A token card has at most one; change its closing date rather than creating another. See reconciliation.

Reconciliation: closing a period for a token card by agreeing its posted balance to the on-chain balance at a date. See reconciliation.

Finalised: a reconciliation that has been closed. Reopening one can email the entity, if that is switched on in settings.

Adjustment: an entry that does not come from an account's own transactions, most often a forex revaluation against reconciled balances. See adjustments.

Cost basis: what your holdings cost, tracked so that gains can be worked out on disposal. Accounting entities only. See cost basis types.

Opening lot: one acquisition held before a cost basis opening date (date, quantity and cost), used by FIFO, LIFO, HIFO and Spec ID. See opening balances.

Spec ID: specific identification, the cost basis type where you pick which lots each disposal sold. See transactions and summaries.

Journal entry: what SimplyLedger sends to QuickBooks for a posting. An entry booked directly in QuickBooks with no posting here is an unposted journal entry. See journal entries.

Email CSV: the export used by long lists (transactions, orders, postings, audit trail). Every matching row, not just the page on screen, is emailed to the address on your account.

Reports: the accounting report centre. Queue a full-range report, such as the postings journal, transaction ledger or realized PnL, and download it from the report history once it is ready. See reports.

Audit trail: the entity's change log of inserts, updates and deletes, with before and after values. See audit trail.