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Getting started

What Backline Books is (and how it thinks)

Books is a double-entry ledger with an automation layer on top. Understanding that order — ledger first, automation second — explains almost every design decision in the product.

Getting started

A tour of the workspace

Where everything lives: the navigation rail, the header band, the entity switcher, and the six navigation groups that organize the whole product.

Getting started

Your first week in Books

An ordered setup path: entity, chart of accounts, opening balances, bank accounts, then people and documents. Doing it in this order avoids most of the rework.

The ledger

How the general ledger works

Books keeps one immutable, hash-chained journal. Everything else — every report, balance, and dashboard tile — is computed from it. Here is what that means in practice.

The ledger

Designing and maintaining the chart of accounts

Account types and why they matter, how deep to go, when to use a dimension instead of a new account, and how to change the chart safely once activity exists.

Banking

Setting up bank and card accounts

How bank accounts pair with the chart of accounts, the difference between connected feeds and manual accounts, and what to do when an account closes.

Banking

Categorizing the transaction feed

Turning raw bank activity into posted entries: what the AI proposes, how to review efficiently, matching against open bills and invoices, and building rules that hold up.

Banking

Reconciling a bank account

The statement-to-book tie-out: pick the account, enter the statement's ending balance, tick what cleared, drive the difference to zero, and lock the period.

Bills & vendors

Entering a bill

Getting bills into Books by email, upload, or hand entry; what the intake extraction does; and how to code, split, and route a bill correctly.

Invoices & customers

Creating and sending an invoice

Building an invoice that gets paid: dates, terms, line detail, sales tax, delivery, and what posts to the ledger when you send it.

Reports

The reports hub

Every report Books produces, what each one answers, and the two things that change what a report shows: scope and date range.

Reports

Reading the Profit & Loss

How the statement is built, what gross margin tells you, why cash and profit differ, and the checks worth running before believing a month.

Close & controls

Running a monthly close

The close checklist, the order that avoids rework, what the support matrix is telling you, and when a period is genuinely ready to lock.

Close & controls

The Exceptions queue

Machine-originated events that could not safely post: what the block reasons mean, how to clear them, and why a growing queue is a configuration signal.

Close & controls

The audit trail and chain verification

The event log, the cryptographic chain that makes tampering detectable, external timestamp anchors, and how to produce an evidence bundle for an auditor.

Payroll

Setting up payroll

The setup wizard end to end: workspace, industry, worksites, people, federal and state tax, bank verification, pay calendar, prior wages, and signing.

Payroll

Running payroll

The run cycle from preview to funding, what to check before approving, off-cycle runs, and what to do when something is wrong after approval.

Client portal

The client portal

What clients see when they sign in, how the portal stays current without anyone sending attachments, and what clients can and cannot do.

AI & automation

How the AI in Books works

What the automation does, the boundary it will not cross, why ambiguity becomes an exception rather than a guess, and how machine work stays attributable.

AI & automation

Document intake

Getting documents in by email or upload, what extraction produces, how detection classifies a document, and how to fix a bad extraction.

AI & automation

The Books coworker

The conversational assistant inside the workspace: what it can answer, what it can do on your behalf, and how it asks before acting.

Troubleshooting

My statements look wrong

A diagnostic path for the most common causes of a Balance Sheet or Profit & Loss that does not make sense — in the order that finds them fastest.

Troubleshooting

My reconciliation will not balance

Working the difference down: what specific difference amounts tell you, and the order of checks that finds the cause quickest.