Installation and basic setup

Installation

1. Install a minimal installation of Drupal 7 in it's most current stable version
2. Download and install latest release of https://www.drupal.org/project/accounting_modules
   drush dl accounting_modules
3. Download and install all modules required by "accounting_modules". (notice the dev version of rules_conditional - this applies if you are using PHP7.2+ otherwise the stable version is ok)
   drush dl admin_menu auto_entitylabel backup_migrate ctools date disable_messages entity entityreference entityreference_autocreate features features_extra field_permissions libraries module_filter panels reroute_email role_export rules rules_conditional-7.x-1.x-dev rules_link token unique_field views views_bulk_operations views_field_view views_rules
4. Enable accounting_modules (which should automatically enable everything else that is necessary).
5. By now, you should have everything working, but the following basic setup is recommended.

Basic setup

Because this is an installation of a minimal Drupal core, the accounting_module doesn't set some environment values. We can do that manually:

1. Make sure that accounting_modules is enabled
2. Switch OFF the following core modules: comment, toolbar (unless already done)
3. In admin/config/system/site-information set the default front page to "accounts"
4. Setup menus - go to admin/structure/menu/settings and select "Accounting menu" as your source for primary links. Select "No Secondary links" as a source for secondary links
5. Setup Blocks - go to admin/structure/block, find blocks called "Search form" and "Navigation" - which should be under "Sidebar first" and in the drop down menu select "none". Which will disable these blocks. Potentially, disable any other blocks that appear in sidebars. Save.
6. Setup date types: admin/config/regional/date-time:

   contextFilter - YYYYMMDD (this is crucial for the site to work)
   shortDayAndTime - DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM
   shortDayOnly - DD/MM/YYYY
   unixTimeStamp - well, the timestamp format (this is crucial for the site to work)
   Long, Medium, Short - set them up however you prefer

   The first four formats can be found at the bottom of the list select list.
    

7. IMPORTANT: Go to "admin/structure/pages" and find the line that says: "/node/node" . If it's disabled, switch it to enabled. For some reason, this is not done automatically by features.
8. Optionally, download and install and set as default "Bartik responsive theme", which will make things look a little better.

The basic setup is done. 

Accounting basics

I feel a little under qualified to give an accounting lecture here as I am self-tought myself. But will give it a go (my understanding anyways). 

Accounting in general is here to keep track of transactions being shifted from one account to another. We do that through commonly understood and accepted structure of accounts and their reports.

Accounts are one of the 5 following types: Income/Expense/Asset/Liability/Equity. Typically, you will end up with tens (or hundreds) of different accounts, but essentially each and every one of them will be of one of the above types (or it's sub types).

These accounts can be summarized by running reports over them, hence giving us some useful information about the tracked financial situation. There is 2 basic types of reports.

1. Profit/Loss statement - Comparison of Income vs. Expenses over a time period (typically a financial year/quarter/etc.).
2. Cashflow statement - Snapshot of Assets, Liabilities or Equity at a specific time

Basically for any account (or sub account) that is either Income or Expense, the reporting that makes sense is Profit/Loss. For the other types of accounts (Asset/Liability/Equity), the reporting making sense is of type Cashflow.

The last thing to mention here is the actual reporting groups. In short - it is bundling accounts that makes sense for reporting together. Often done in a hierarchical order, but hierarchy is not compulsory. Although this will change for each use case, the root of the hierarchy should pretty much be the same for everyone.

Example will be worth a thousand words - we can create some accounts and their reporting groups in the next chapter.