Flore is a salaried employee: a 350,000 F paycheck every month, 80,000 F in rent, and occasionally a small side job that adds to her income. Yet by mid-month she has no reliable way to know how much she actually has left, or how long it will last — just a rough memory of what she withdrew at the ATM. Last year, filing her IRPP tax return, she had to reconstruct her extra income by hand, digging back through her email, without even being sure of the total.
So starting this month, she decides to record every inflow and outflow of money in zBilling.net — no spreadsheet, no accounting, just three pieces of information per transaction:
The category answers "where does my money go?". The payee, , on the other hand, is required on every transaction — let's make the most of it: it's the record you attach your pay slips and receipts to (step 5), otherwise a document received by email gets lost in a "Downloads" folder.
Create your workspace
The first time you log in, the setup wizard asks for the type of activity. The « Personal » (profile, shown like this, in English, in the wizard — its description stays in French: "Manage your personal finances, your budget and your accounts.") is enough. This guide then only uses its two free modules — Contacts and Finances — never billing, nor the modules reserved for paid workspaces.
Create your money accounts
One account per real pocket of money — a cash till, possibly a mobile payment or bank account. Leave the Cashier field set to -- Myself --.
Don't create one account per expense category. An account represents money that physically exists somewhere. Sorting by kind is done through the category, when you record each transaction.
Create your key contacts
| Contact to create | Used for |
|---|---|
| Your employer | recording your paycheck, storing pay slips |
| Your landlord | paying rent, storing receipts |
| A client | if you have extra income — recording it, invoices to archive |
| « Everyday expenses » | a single, generic contact for all your small expenses with no specific third party (see box below) |
The field Payer / Payee is required on every transaction, even an expense with no obvious third party (groceries, transport…). Create an "Everyday expenses" contact once and for all, and reuse it for anything that doesn't have a real counterpart.
Tip — no need to go through the Contacts module: in the transaction form, type a name that doesn't exist yet in the Payer/Payee field, and contact creation opens automatically.
Record your paycheck
The employer's monthly transfer (or payment), as Income :
From the second entry onward, the category is suggested automatically: the monthly routine comes down to choosing the account and confirming the amount.
Record an expense
Same form, switch to Expense :
Moving money from Cash to Mobile Money is a transfer, , never an expense — use the dedicated feature, otherwise your expenses are artificially inflated.
Income
- SALAIREthe employer's monthly payment
- REVENU COMPLEMENTAIREfreelance work, rental income — keep an eye on this for the tax return
Expenses
- LOYERhome rent
- TRANSPORTfuel, public transport
- ALIMENTATIONgroceries, market
- SANTEpharmacy, consultations
- EDUCATIONschool fees
- ABONNEMENTSelectricity, water, internet, phone
- DIVERSeverything else, as a last resort
Pick a short list and stick to it: the spelling must be identical from one entry to the next for totals to stay accurate.
Attach your documents
zBilling.net doesn't currently let you attach a file directly to a financial transaction. However, every contact record has a Files, tab, with its own document category — more than enough to file things away as the year goes along.
The habit to build : every pay slip in the record of theemployer, , every rent receipt in that of the landlord, , every extra-income invoice in that of the client concerned. On filing day, the twelve pay slips for the year are already stored in the same place — not something to reconstruct from an email inbox.
Where does my money go?
Two screens, two levels of detail.
Finances → Dashboard gives the quick answer, for the current month :
Further down on the same screen, Expenses by category — 30 days already ranks line items from biggest to smallest :
Finances → Transactions, for line-by-line detail: filter by Quick period (This month, This year…), every transaction already carries its category.
For a comparison table across several months: click Export — the CSV lists every transaction with its Category — column, then build a pivot table in Excel or Google Sheets (Category in rows, Expense in values).
How long can Flore's money last her?
The dashboard directly estimates her financial runway from her available cash and her recurring expenses. Two indicators are shown:
Reserve after expenses
What would be left of her cash after covering the equivalent of one month of recurring expenses.
Estimated coverage
The approximate number of months her current cash could cover this level of expenses.
zBilling.net then shows an indicator Healthy, Tight or Negative so you can read the situation at a glance.
Flore's actual result after just two months of use: reserve of −134 000 F, badge "Negative". Nothing alarming in itself — every additional month in surplus (she just closed one at +90,000 F) pushes this figure back up. That's exactly the point of these two indicators: having a positive surplus every month isn't enough if the reserve built up stays thin.
A full month
| Line item | Detail | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Income | SALAIRE — employer's payment | 350 000 F |
| REVENU COMPLEMENTAIRE — a one-off job | 45 000 F | |
| Total income | 395 000 F | |
| Expenses | ALIMENTATION | 90 000 F |
| LOYER | 80 000 F | |
| EDUCATION | 40 000 F | |
| TRANSPORT | 35 000 F | |
| ABONNEMENTS | 25 000 F | |
| DIVERS | 20 000 F | |
| SANTE | 15 000 F | |
| Total expenses | 305 000 F | |
| Month's surplus | 90 000 F |
Prepare your IRPP tax return
At year end (or whenever required), reconstructing everything takes just a few clicks:
- 1Finances → Transactions → Quick period This year.
- 2Filter Categories → SALAIRE : the annual total paid by the employer, to cross-check against the salary certificate (IRPP is generally already withheld at source there).
- 3Filter Categories → REVENU COMPLEMENTAIRE : what was received outside the paycheck — often the part that actually needs to be self-declared.
- 4Export the result: the CSV already contains Category, Partner and Amounts, ready for an accountant or a file.
- 5Retrieve the files stored on the Employer/Landlord records (step 5) — the year's pay slips are already there.
Important — zBilling.net reconstructs the numbers and files the documents away; it does not calculate the IRPP owed or determine what's deductible in each situation. Check this point with the tax office or an accountant.
Habits to build
- 1Always write your categories exactly the same way. SALAIRE and Salaire produce two separate lines in the totals.
- 2Record it the same day. A budget that falls two months behind no longer answers "where does my money go?".
- 3Don't confuse a transfer with an expense. Moving money between your own accounts is never an expense.
- 4Attach each pay slip/receipt on the day you receive it — not at year end, by which time half will have disappeared from your inbox.
- 5Check the period before drawing conclusions. The Dashboard only shows the current month and the previous one; for the full year, always go through Transactions with an explicit date filter.
What this guide doesn't cover
Deliberately limited to the two free modules of the Personal workspace:
- no automatic calculation of the IRPP owed, nor determination of deductible expenses — a tax matter, not a zBilling.net module;
- no attachment directly on a financial transaction (workaround: the contact record, step 5);
- no automatic reminder for tax deadlines;
- no automatic comparison across several months — the Dashboard's "Expenses by category" widget only covers the last 30 days; beyond that, go through the CSV export described in the "Where does my money go?" section.
Contacts and Finances are enough from end to end: the rest of zBilling.net (billing, inventory, HR…) belongs to paid workspaces and isn't needed for this use case.
Contacts and Finance are available for free in the Personal workspace — no credit card required.
