At the end of your financial year, your accountant usually needs two numbers that don't show up in revenue: money you've taken for sessions that haven't happened yet, and the value of vouchers customers have bought but not yet spent. Both are liabilities - cash in hand that you still owe in service - and Session works them out for you as of any date you pick.
These figures live in the year-end section of Reports, below the revenue, occupancy and customer numbers. Unlike the rest of the page, they're a point-in-time snapshot rather than a date range.
What each figure means
- Deferred income is money you've already taken for sessions that fall after your snapshot date. The customer has paid, but you haven't delivered the session yet, so it isn't earned revenue - it's an obligation carried on your books until the session happens.
- Voucher liability is the value of vouchers your customers hold that they haven't spent. A customer who bought a £50 gift voucher and used £20 of it leaves you owing £30 of service. That outstanding balance is a liability until it's redeemed or expires.
Both numbers are organisation-wide. If you run more than one location, the location filter in the page header doesn't affect them - vouchers in particular have no location, so a single combined figure is the honest one. The section labels itself "organisation-wide" when a location filter is active.
Run a year-end report
- 1
Open Reports and scroll to the Year-end reporting section at the foot of the page.
- 2
Set the snapshot date in the date picker. This is the "as of" date - usually your financial year end. It defaults to yesterday.
- 3
Select Run report. Session calculates both figures together and shows the totals.
- 4
Use the Download CSV button under each total to get the line-by-line detail for your accountant.
The snapshot date is "as of end of that day". Pick your last day of the financial year (for example, the UK tax year end), and the report reflects the position at the close of that day.
How deferred income is calculated
A booking counts towards deferred income when, as of your snapshot date, both of these are true:
- It was paid (or recorded) on or before the snapshot date. Session uses the booking's creation date as the payment date, which also captures admin-created bookings that were never charged through Session but still represent an obligation from the day they were made.
- Its session falls after the snapshot date - the session you owe hasn't happened yet.
The deferred amount per booking is what was paid minus any refund already issued. Bookings that were cancelled and fully refunded are excluded, since there's nothing left owing.
The CSV lists each booking: session date and time, session type, customer name and email, spaces, amount paid, refunded, the deferred amount, and when it was booked.
Deferred income captures any prepayment for a future session, whatever the source - a card payment at checkout, an offline or walk-in payment you recorded, or an admin booking. It's about timing (paid now, delivered later), not the payment method.
How voucher liability is calculated
The voucher figure reconstructs each voucher's balance as it stood on your snapshot date. Session takes today's remaining balance and adds back any redemptions that happened after the snapshot, so the number reflects the position at that moment, not now.
A voucher is included when it was created on or before the snapshot date, hadn't expired by then, and still had value remaining.
The total liability is amount-type vouchers only - the ones carrying a fixed pound balance, like a credit gift voucher. These are the ones that map cleanly to a monetary liability.
Session-count vouchers and bundles (where the customer holds a number of remaining sessions, not a cash balance) appear in the CSV and the voucher count, but they don't add to the pound total - their worth depends on which session is later booked, so there's no fixed figure to carry. Value the remaining sessions yourself if your accountant needs them included.
The CSV lists each voucher: code, name, value type, original value, the remaining balance at the snapshot, expiry date, source (admin-created or purchased), and the recipient email where there is one. For more on the different voucher types, see the vouchers article.
Who can see these reports
Reports are available to Admins and Superadmins. Staff don't have access to the Reports page, so they can't see your year-end liability figures. To give someone access, see invite your team and admin and staff roles.
Common questions
- 1
Why doesn't deferred income match my Stripe balance? They measure different things. Deferred income is money taken for sessions not yet delivered, attributed to the session date. Your Stripe balance reflects when payments settled and payouts left. The two will rarely line up - that's expected.
- 2
A customer paid for a session next month - is that deferred or revenue? Deferred, until the session happens. As of any snapshot date before the session, that payment sits in deferred income. Once the session date passes, it's earned and drops out of the deferred figure.
- 3
Why is my voucher liability total lower than the number of vouchers shown? The total only sums amount-type (cash-balance) vouchers. Session-count vouchers and bundles are counted and exported but don't add a fixed pound figure, so the headline total can be smaller than the voucher count suggests.
- 4
Do expired vouchers count? No. A voucher that had expired by your snapshot date is excluded - it's no longer a liability. See vouchers for how expiry works.
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Can I get the full transaction list, not just the totals? Yes - each total has a Download CSV button with the line-by-line detail. For the wider set of accounting exports (the bookings ledger and attendance), see CSV exports.