Ledgerlight workbook guide
Track partial invoice payments with Ledgerlight
A $1,200 invoice paid in two installments still has a $1,200 invoice total. Record each receipt on its own payment row so you can see both cash received and the amount still open.
Ledgerlight Freelancer Ledger is a local XLSX workbook for invoices, payments, expenses, client balances and monthly cash. This guide walks through a fictional example you can use to check the relationships before entering your own records.
1. Start with a separate practice copy
Keep the supplied filled example unchanged. Make a working copy of workbook/ledgerlight-freelancer.xlsx from your extracted package. For a fresh practice ledger, clear only the blue input ranges: Clients A6:B55, Invoices A6:F205, Payments A6:F505 and Expenses A6:G305. Keep the gray formula columns and Summary controls.
On Summary, set reporting year B4 to 2026 and as-of date B5 to October 15, 2026. Enter dates as spreadsheet dates rather than text. Set the chosen planning rate B6 to 10% and already-reserved cash B7 to 20. The 10% is an arbitrary practice assumption for cash planning. It is not a recommended tax rate, estimated payment or tax calculation.
All names, IDs and transactions below are fictional. The amounts are USD. Ledgerlight does not perform currency conversion or sales-tax calculations.
2. Enter clients and preserve the original invoice amounts
In Clients, enter C101 — Cedar Vale Studio and C102 — Harbor Letterpress. Use stable, unique IDs even if a client name later changes. In Invoices, enter these rows in the blue A:F columns:
| Invoice ID | Client ID | Issued | Due | Description | Gross total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I101 | C101 | 10/01/2026 | 10/10/2026 | Illustration project | $1,200.00 |
| I102 | C102 | 10/12/2026 | 11/11/2026 | Layout project | $600.00 |
Leave I101’s gross total at $1,200 after receiving a deposit. Reducing that value would change the billed record and obscure the link between the original invoice and the receipts.
3. Give each partial receipt its own payment row
In Payments A:F, enter a unique payment ID, the existing invoice ID, received date, positive amount, method and optional memo. Use separate rows for these receipts:
| Payment ID | Invoice ID | Received date | Amount | Method | Memo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P101 | I101 | 10/05/2026 | $300.00 | Bank | First installment |
| P102 | I101 | 10/14/2026 | $500.00 | Bank | Second installment |
| P103 | I102 | 10/20/2026 | $250.00 | Bank | Future-date cutoff test only |
As of October 15, I101 has $800 received and $400 open. Its October 10 due date makes that remaining $400 overdue. I102 has $600 open and is not yet overdue. The October 20 practice payment is outside the reporting cutoff, so it does not reduce the October 15 balance or increase cash received.
In real records, use the actual receipt date. Do not enter an expected payment as money already received. The future row here exists only to demonstrate the cutoff. Open balances can include older invoices, while the selected year’s cash receipts can include collections against prior-year invoices.
4. Add expenses and reconcile the cash summary
In Expenses A:G, use unique IDs and actual paid dates. For this practice copy, enter E101 dated October 8, category Software, vendor Sample Tools, description Monthly tools, amount 90, business-use share 100%. Enter E102 dated October 10, category Workspace, vendor Sample Workspace, description Shared workspace, amount 100, share 50%.
The calculated business-spend amounts are $90 and $50. The business-use share is your bookkeeping classification; it does not decide whether an expense is tax deductible. Check the practice Summary against these expected values:
| Summary measure | Expected amount | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Billed this year | $1,800.00 | $1,200 + $600 issued before the cutoff |
| Cash received | $800.00 | $300 + $500 received by the cutoff |
| Business expenses | $140.00 | $90 × 100% + $100 × 50% |
| Net cash surplus | $660.00 | $800 − $140 |
| Open invoices | $1,000.00 | $400 on I101 + $600 on I102 |
| Overdue balance | $400.00 | The unpaid part of I101 |
| Overpayment credit | $0.00 | Neither invoice is overpaid |
| Planning reserve target | $66.00 | Positive $660 net cash × the practice 10% |
| Additional reserve | $46.00 | $66 target − $20 already reserved |
Net cash surplus follows receipts minus business spending. It is not accrual profit or a tax-return result. The reserve target uses positive net cash, rounds to cents and cannot create a negative additional reserve. The monthly chart follows cash dates; do not sum the cumulative reserve-target column.
5. Resolve input warnings before trusting totals
A Review (1=yes) value of 1 needs attention in its source row. Check for a missing or duplicate ID, an invoice linked to an unknown client, a payment linked to an unknown invoice, a text date, an invalid amount or a missing business-use share. Summary and client totals can show Review inputs until the source issue is fixed.
Preserve the formula checks because pasting can bypass entry validation. A zero review flag means no local source issue was detected; it does not certify the bookkeeping or tax treatment. Sort the whole table to keep records together. Avoid sorting one input column by itself.
6. Check the saved workbook and any PDF before relying on them
Use Save As for a separate .xlsx copy, close it and reopen it. Check that the practice entries, linked balances and formulas remain correct. Keep the XLSX format if the application asks about changing formats. LibreOffice’s official file-format help documents opening XLSX in Calc and choosing an Office format with Save As; that general support does not verify this workbook’s interactive behavior.
For a presentation copy, review the print area, landscape orientation and scale, export Summary to PDF, then reopen the PDF and check all months, amounts and the chart for clipping. Keep the editable workbook as your working record. These save/reopen, PDF and visual checks remain part of the pending manual review.
The prepared capacity is 200 invoices, 500 payments, 300 expenses and 50 clients. Stay inside those tables. Expansion requires extending formulas, validations, conditional formats and bounded references, followed by testing the new rows. Inserting an extra row alone is insufficient.
Get the workbook and read the current terms
Ledgerlight is a separate $8.00 USD one-time purchase. Applicable taxes calculated at checkout. The private package includes the editable workbook, fictional sample, setup documentation, purchaser license, component notice and integrity manifest. Application software is not included. No bank connection, macro or paid API is required.
Review the Ledgerlight product page and its current manual-review notice, the setup guide, purchaser license and refund policy before purchase. The license permits personal and internal commercial use and sharing your reports; it excludes resale or redistribution of the template. No guaranteed update schedule or personal bookkeeping service is included.
Keep backups on your own device. The downloaded workbook contains no tracking. For order, delivery or defect questions, use Nishvault support and describe the issue without sending unredacted customer or financial records.