8/8ths, your working interest, and a chart of accounts that keeps gross, your share, and overhead recovery apart.
Eight-eighths means the whole well. One hundred percent of the revenue, one hundred percent of the cost, before anybody’s decimal is applied. Your working interest is a slice of that. The books have to be able to tell those two numbers apart, or every report is a shrug.
Small operators usually learn this the hard way. Vendor bills get entered at the company’s share one month and at gross the next. Revenue hits as the deposit, which is already net of tax, deducts, and somebody’s JIB. The profit and loss is a number. It is not a well.
If the books only show your net, you cannot see what the well actually cost.
Here is a chart of accounts that keeps 8/8ths, your share, and your partners’ share in different places — small enough to run in QuickBooks.
Full revenue, full LOE, full capital. This is the column on the JIB and the top of the revenue statement. It is how you compare a well to itself.
Gross times your working interest. This is your profit and loss. It should be a result of the gross, not a separate set of guesses.
Operators carry this as a receivable. Non-operators never booked the gross in the first place. Their books start at their share.
Operators should book the vendor bill at 8/8ths, coded to the well. When the JIB goes out, the partners’ share comes off that expense and onto a receivable. Your share stays on the well. That cutback is what makes lease operating expense on the profit and loss equal your working interest, while the well file still shows the gross.
The other method books only your share as expense on day one, and sends the partners’ share straight to a receivable without ever touching LOE. The profit and loss looks similar. The gross is gone. You cannot tie the JIB back to the vendor bill without a spreadsheet, because the spreadsheet is where the 8/8ths went.
You do not need the five-hundred-account upstream chart. You need enough accounts that a well’s story survives, and a class (or a customer, or a job) for each well so the same accounts work everywhere.
Gross value, by product. Not the deposit. A fourth account, if you want it, for other revenue — saltwater, a surface use — so it does not inflate the price you think you received.
Its own expense, or a contra-revenue if your CPA prefers. Either is fine. Folding it into sales is how the realized price becomes a fiction.
One account each, or one “post-production” account with the detail kept on the line. The rate is what you compare. A single “revenue” net of everything cannot show a rate.
The producing well’s direct operating cost. Split by type — labor, chemicals, power, water, repairs — only if you will actually look at the split. A single LOE account by well is enough to start.
Capital, not LOE. Tie them to the AFE. A workover that extends the well’s life belongs here or in its own workover account, not in repairs, if you want the LOE trend to mean anything.
Income. The partners’ share of COPAS overhead lands here when you send the JIB. It does not credit lease operating expense. A credit to LOE makes the well look cheaper and hides the recovery.
The receivable is what partners owe you. The cutback is the credit that takes their share of direct costs out of the gross expense. Overhead does not run through the cutback. It runs through income.
You own 40 percent. A partner owns 60. A chemical invoice arrives for $10,000, gross.
Debit lease operating expense $10,000. Credit accounts payable $10,000. Class it to the well. The well file now shows the true cost.
Their 60 percent is $6,000. Debit JIB receivable $6,000. Credit the LOE cutback $6,000. Expense on your profit and loss falls to your $4,000.
Say producing overhead is $1,000 gross and the agreement puts it on this well. The partner’s $600 is a debit to the same receivable and a credit to overhead recovery. LOE does not move.
The partner’s statement shows $6,000 of chemicals and $600 of overhead. Your books show $4,000 of LOE, $600 of overhead income, and $6,600 sitting in the receivable until they pay. All three numbers tie to the same piece of paper.
A non-operator books the “your share” column. Their LOE is their LOE. They keep the operator’s gross on the JIB so they can check the multiplication, and they do not journal the other 60 percent. A royalty owner does not book LOE at all. Royalty is revenue, tax, and whatever deducts the lease actually allows.
Mixing those treatments in one file — gross for the wells you operate, net for the wells you don’t, revenue-only for minerals — is correct. One universal rule of “always book 8/8ths” will invent costs you never owed.
Oil, gas, NGLs, tax, and deducts all dumped together. You will never see a price or a rate again.
The well’s operating cost drops by the partners’ overhead, which was never an operating cost. Recovery belongs in income.
Wells as classes are right. Wells as classes, with every dollar in “Ask my accountant,” are a class list of uncoded cash.
Bring the chart, even if it came over from QuickBooks in a hurry. Gross, cutback, overhead income, and the receivable get a home, and the next JIB posts into them instead of into “miscellaneous.”
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You only pay for what you use — no seat fees and no modules you don't need. Pricing is a monthly platform fee plus usage on documents processed, ACH payments, mailed checks, and the workflows you turn on. We size it to your actual monthly close so it scales with the work, not your headcount.
A smaller operator running 25 documents, 10 ACH payments, and 2 mailed checks a month would be priced on that exact volume. A larger operator at 100 documents, 50 ACH payments, and 10 checks pays predictably more. You always know what you're spending because it tracks the actual close.
Joltly connects directly to QuickBooks and Quorum On-Demand Accounting, and supports file-based export workflows for systems like PakEnergy and Integra. It manages accounts, items, vendors, partner mappings, JIB clearing, revenue liabilities, and netting accounts inside your existing setup.
Both sides of settlement. On expenses: invoice review, GL coding, approvals, JIB creation, ACH and check payments. On revenue: statement OCR, partner distributions, remittance emails, and netting between JIB receivables and revenue payouts — so your team replaces spreadsheet work and email follow-up during close.
Yes. Your wells, partners, revenue interests, GL mappings, approval flow, export formats, and partner-facing statements are configured per operator. Most customers go live on their existing chart of accounts and ERP setup — no rebuild required.
Faster than most teams expect. Your AP workflow can be live in less than a week — and you don't need to change your current accounting system. Revenue typically takes about two weeks. The only thing we need from you is a sample revenue statement so we can train the AI on your format.
We set up a Microsoft Teams channel or email channel for your team — whichever you prefer. You'll also get the founders' phone numbers for text messaging when you need a fast answer.
