Frequently asked questions

A replacement. Books keeps its own ledger and is the system of record for the entities you run in it. There is an import path for bringing existing books over, and a QuickBooks connection used during migration, but the intent is that Books holds the books.

Yes. Add each company as a legal entity inside the organization. They share users, settings, and the chart of accounts structure, while keeping separate ledgers and separate financial statements. Consolidated scope reports across all of them.

It posts only what it can complete safely and deterministically, and every posting it makes is attributed to it in the audit trail and marked in the Source column. Anything ambiguous stops and becomes an exception for a person to resolve.

Check the More menu at the bottom of the desktop rail. Lower-frequency destinations — Bill Pay, Bank Rec, Lockbox Deposits, Monthly Close, Policies, Audit Trail, Write-up, Loan Amortization, Document Storage, and Settings — live there so the rail stays short.

Instant search is faster than hunting. Press the search shortcut anywhere in the help center to search articles, and use the in-product search to jump to records.

Approvals are human-prepared documents waiting for a human decision. Exceptions are machine-originated events that could not safely post and need a human to unblock them. They are deliberately separate queues because they call for different judgement.

Opening balances alone are enough to run correct books going forward. Bring one or two prior fiscal years of detail if you want comparative reporting inside Books, and bring more only if you have a specific reason — an audit, a lender, a diligence process.

Historical detail is not free: every imported year is a year you may need to reconcile if someone questions a number.

Yes, within reason. Adding accounts later is routine. Renaming or merging accounts after months of posted activity is not — the history follows the account, so plan the structure even if you add leaves to it over time.

No. Reports are projections over the journal and will run at any time. But an unreconciled bank account means the ledger's cash figure has not been proven against the bank, so treat pre-reconciliation reports as provisional.

Yes. Access is granted per entity, so a bookkeeper who handles only one of your companies sees only that company — including in Consolidated scope, which shows them only the entities they can access.

Yes. Each legal entity carries its own fiscal calendar and its own period locks. Consolidated reporting across entities with different year ends is possible but should be read carefully — say so explicitly if you hand such a statement to a third party.

The chart is maintained at the organization level so that consolidation is meaningful — the same account code means the same thing everywhere. Accounts that are irrelevant to a given entity simply carry no activity there.

Almost always rounding on multi-currency balances, or an account in the prior system that was excluded from the export. Compare account counts first — a missing account is easier to spot than a wrong number.

Do not plug the difference to a suspense account and move on. A small unexplained difference at cutover becomes a permanent, unexplainable difference in every future statement.

Yes — bank statement CSVs import into the transaction feed for any account, including for periods before your cutover. Whether they post to the ledger depends on how you categorize them, so be careful not to double-count activity already covered by opening balances.

They do not come across automatically. Bring over what has ongoing value — signed contracts, loan documents, fixed asset invoices, prior tax returns — into Document Storage, and leave routine receipts in your old system's archive.

Yes, and you should. Grant read access to the entities and reports they need. If they need to post adjusting entries, grant that for the engagement and review those entries in Approvals — every entry they post is attributed to them in the audit trail either way.

Their own reports, transactions, reconciliations, invoices, bills, payroll summaries, documents, and open requests. They cannot post, cannot see other clients, and cannot change settings.

Check the users list — a pending invitation can be resent from there. If it still does not arrive, the usual cause is a mail filter quarantining the sign-in link; ask them to check quarantine before you troubleshoot further.

No. You reverse it. The reversal posts an equal and opposite entry dated as you choose, and both entries stay in the journal with a link between them.

Because activity was posted for dates inside the report period after you exported it — back-dated bills, a late bank import, an adjusting entry. The Audit Trail's event log shows exactly what was posted and when.

If the period is closed, back-dated posting is refused, which is precisely why closing periods matters.

Only for work it can complete deterministically and safely, and those entries are marked with an AI source. Anything ambiguous becomes an exception for a person to resolve.

The chart is shared across the organization so consolidation is meaningful — code 6100 means the same thing in every entity. An account that is irrelevant to one entity simply carries no activity there and drops out of that entity's statements.

Control accounts are driven by their subledgers. Posting to A/R by hand breaks the tie-out between the control balance and the open invoice list, which then breaks aging reports. Post an invoice, a payment, or a credit memo instead.

Each bank or card account pairs one-to-one with an asset account in the chart. That pairing is what keeps the register and the ledger from drifting apart.

Yes. A draft entry affects nothing until it posts. Drafts are the right way to stage period-end work you want a colleague to review, and material entries can be routed through Approvals so review is explicit rather than implied.

Set it up as a recurring journal. Recurring entries generate on a schedule and can be reviewed before they post, which is safer than someone remembering to copy last month's entry.

Not as a single entry — each entry belongs to one legal entity. Use the intercompany entry screen, which creates the paired entries on both sides together and marks them for elimination in consolidation.

Reverse one of them, dated the same as the original if the period is open. Note the duplicate in the memo so the pair reads as intentional rather than as another error.

No. There is no delete, at any permission level. That is what makes the hash chain and the audit trail meaningful — an ability to delete that only administrators had would still be an ability to delete.

Date the reversal in the current open period. Reopening a closed period is possible but should be rare and deliberate — issued statements should stay reproducible.

Mechanically they are the same kind of tag; the difference is what you use them for. Locations are usually physical — sites, stores, regions. Classes are usually functional — departments, programs, product lines, funds. Using both gives you a two-axis view of the same costs.

Yes, with a journal entry that credits the pooled cost and debits each dimension its share. Recurring journals are the natural home for a monthly allocation so the method stays consistent.

If it files its own tax return and holds its own bank account, it is an entity. If it is a way of looking at one business, it is a dimension. Splitting a single company into multiple entities to get departmental reporting creates intercompany work you do not need.

Yes — set it to wait for review, and adjust the amount before each occurrence posts. That keeps the accounts, dimensions, and memo consistent while letting the figure vary.

It will not post into the locked period. It surfaces as an exception so a person can decide whether to re-date it into the open period or reopen the period.

Each schedule belongs to one legal entity, like the entries it produces. Multi-entity allocations are best handled with intercompany entries rather than by duplicating a schedule.

That is normal and expected between reconciliations. The feed balance is what the bank says right now; the ledger balance is what has been recorded and coded. Transactions sitting in the feed uncategorized, and outstanding checks that have not cleared, both create a legitimate difference.

Reconciliation is where the two are proven to agree after accounting for timing. If they still disagree after a clean reconciliation, that is a real problem worth chasing.

Not in the ledger. Each bank account belongs to one legal entity. If one entity's account genuinely pays another entity's costs, record that as an intercompany transaction rather than pointing two entities at one account.

Most often the institution requires re-authentication — a password change or a periodic consent renewal. Reconnect the account from Banking. Import a statement CSV to cover the gap so the period can still be reconciled on time.

No. An import puts transactions in the account's feed, where they wait to be categorized. Nothing reaches the journal until a transaction is coded to an account.

Imported transactions that have not been categorized can be removed. Once a transaction has been categorized it has posted to the ledger, so removing it means reversing the entry — recategorize or reverse rather than trying to delete.

Imports are per account, because the mapping and the sign convention are properties of that bank's export. Saved templates make repeat imports fast enough that batching is rarely worth it.

Open the transaction and add lines. A card payment covering supplies, software, and meals should be split rather than coded to whichever account is largest — the split is what makes the P&L worth reading.

Recategorize it. The prior entry is reversed and the new one posted, with both visible in the audit trail. You do not need to hand-write a reversing journal entry.

Card processors deposit net of fees, and often in batches that do not match individual invoices. Code the gross to a clearing account, code the fees to an expense account, and let the clearing account net to zero — that way both revenue and fees are recorded at full value.

Automation stopped because it could not resolve something safely — an account that does not exist, a period that is locked, an ambiguous match. The exception states the reason, and clearing it lets the work resume.

Yes, and you should — same process. The statement ending balance is the amount owed. Watch the sign convention: on a card, charges increase the balance owed and payments reduce it.

Add it. That is the reconciliation doing its job. Code it properly rather than plugging it to a miscellaneous account — an unexplained bank debit is worth understanding before it is buried.

Yes, but treat it as an exception rather than a routine step. Unlocking invalidates every reconciliation after it, so you will need to work forward again. If you only need to correct coding, recategorize instead — that does not disturb the cash tie-out.

Monthly, on every account, as part of close. Accounts with high volume or fraud exposure benefit from a weekly pass. An account nobody reconciles is an account nobody would notice being drained.

The bank feed will show the deposit as a single amount. That deposit should be matched to the posted lockbox batch, not coded to revenue — the revenue was recognized when the invoices were issued.

Apply the one payment across multiple invoices. That is the normal case, and the payment record keeps the split so each invoice's history is accurate.

Usually the bank deposited a batch across two days, or an item was returned. Compare the batch against the deposit on the statement before adjusting anything, and reconcile the difference rather than plugging it.

Not from every vendor, but collecting one from everyone is far simpler than deciding case by case and being wrong. Corporations are generally exempt from 1099-NEC reporting, but there are exceptions — legal services being the notable one — and you cannot apply the exemption without knowing the entity type, which is what the W-9 tells you.

Yes, and they are separate records. If you both buy from and sell to the same party, keep the balances gross rather than netting them, unless you have a contractual right of offset — netting hides both exposures.

The expense belongs to the periods that consumed the service, not the period the invoice arrived. Code it to a prepaid asset and amortize it, or accrue it across the periods — a recurring journal is the tidy way to do this.

If it is material, that is what accruals are for — you should have accrued the expected cost at close. If it is not material, record it in the current open period and note it. Do not reopen a closed period for an immaterial late bill.

Yes. Record it in the vendor's currency; it is translated at the applicable rate for reporting, and the difference between the rate at bill date and at payment date is recognized as an exchange gain or loss.

Policy can allow it, but it defeats the purpose. Configure the matrix so preparer and approver must differ for anything above your threshold — if your team is too small for that, have the owner approve, which is the honest answer for a small business.

It posts to the ledger and becomes payable. Approval is authorization to owe; paying it is a separate step with its own controls.

Approval decisions are recorded in the system, where they are attributable and auditable. Notifications can reach approvers wherever they read them, but the decision itself is made in Books — an emailed "looks fine" is not an audit record.

Yes. Scheduling by due date is the point of a payment run — it lets you hold cash until it is genuinely due without risking a missed payment.

Enter the bill as normal, then record the payment from the account that actually paid it — the credit card account, or an owner contribution account if it was personal funds. The expense still belongs to the business.

Void the payment in Books so the bill reopens, then pursue recovery with the bank or the recipient. Voiding records what happened; it does not retrieve the money, and the two are separate problems.

You may be required to apply backup withholding on their payments, and you must still file, reporting what you know. Speak to your tax preparer — the exposure for not filing is generally larger than the awkwardness of the conversation.

No. Employees receive a W-2. Contractors paid through the payroll system receive a 1099 generated there, so check both surfaces to avoid double-reporting the same person.

Only the ACH portion is yours to report; the card portion is reported by the processor. The compliance screen separates them, but confirm the split looks right before filing.

Yes — the customer record shows invoices, payments, credit memos, and the running balance, so a collections call can be made from one screen.

Keep separate records and keep the balances gross. Netting them hides both the receivable and the payable, and if either party disputes, you will want the two histories separate.

An issued invoice has posted, so changes go through a credit memo or a void-and-reissue rather than an edit. If it was never sent and has just been issued, voiding and reissuing is clean.

A deposit received before work is done is a liability, not revenue. Invoice it to a customer deposit or deferred revenue account, then recognize revenue as the work is delivered.

Yes, for anything billed on a fixed schedule. Recurring invoices generate on their schedule and can be reviewed before issue, which is the right setting when quantities vary.

The invoice record shows delivery. If it was delivered and they still cannot find it, resend to the accounts-payable address specifically — the usual cause is that it landed with someone who does not process payments.

The deposit appears in the feed and should be matched to the recorded payment, not coded to revenue. Coding it to revenue records the sale twice and leaves the invoice open.

Void the payment, which reopens the invoice, and record any bank fee as an expense. If you charge the fee on, that is a new invoice line rather than an adjustment to the original.

Record the refund against the unapplied credit so it clears the customer's balance. Do not post it as an expense — it is a return of their money, not a cost of doing business.

Only if it was never sent and never paid. Voiding an invoice the customer has already recorded creates a mismatch between your books and theirs, and it removes evidence that the sale happened at all.

Issue the credit memo, leave it as an open credit, then record a payment out that applies against it. That way the credit and the cash are separately visible.

Yes, when the original sale carried tax. Include the tax portion so your liability reflects the net sale. If the tax was already remitted, the credit reduces the next period's liability.

Something was posted with a date inside the period after your earlier run — a back-dated bill, a late bank import, an adjusting entry. The audit trail's event log shows exactly what and when.

Locking periods at close is what stops this happening to statements you have already issued.

Yes — the Profit & Loss supports comparative columns, and Budget vs. Actual compares posted activity against budget for the same period.

Accounts with activity in the period appear even if they net to zero, because a zero net over two offsetting entries is information. Accounts with no activity at all are omitted.

Profit and cash are different measures. Cash can fall on a profitable month because customers have not paid yet, because you paid down debt or bought equipment — neither of which is an expense — or because you took distributions.

The Cash Flow statement exists precisely to explain this gap.

Because it bought an asset rather than consuming a resource. It appears on the Balance Sheet, and reaches the P&L gradually as depreciation over its useful life.

Correctly so. Distributions to owners are equity transactions, not costs of running the business. They reduce equity on the Balance Sheet and show in financing activities on the Cash Flow statement.

No. Unbalanced entries are refused at posting, so the equation always holds. If it looks wrong, the problem is classification — an account with the wrong type appearing in the wrong section — not arithmetic.

Equity is contributions, plus cumulative profits, less distributions. Unless the business has never made or lost money and you have never taken anything out, it will differ from what you contributed.

Compare current assets to current liabilities — that is working capital. But cash timing matters more than the ratio for most small businesses, so read it alongside the A/R and A/P aging reports.

Working capital has absorbed the profit — usually receivables growing faster than payables, or inventory building. Check A/R aging first: if the receivable growth is in overdue balances rather than current ones, the problem is collections, not growth.

Start from open receivables by expected collection date, subtract open payables by due date, add payroll and recurring commitments. The A/R and A/P aging reports plus your payroll calendar cover most of it.

It cannot, in Books — unbalanced entries are refused at posting. If the totals look unequal, check that you are comparing the debit and credit columns rather than a subtotal, and that the report is not filtered to a subset of accounts.

Yes, as PDF or CSV. Most preparers want CSV so they can map it into their own working papers, and a PDF alongside it as the authoritative version.

The A/R aging total must equal the A/R control account, and likewise for A/P. A difference means either something posted directly to the control account, or a payment is recorded but unapplied.

Check unapplied cash first — it is the more common cause and the faster to clear.

The payment was recorded but not applied to that invoice. Open the payment and apply it.

Usually one side was posted and the other was not, or the two sides were posted with different dates so they disagree at period end. Compare the two accounts' activity for the period and find the unmatched entry.

No. Locations within one legal entity are a dimension, not separate entities, and need no elimination. Consolidation is for genuinely separate legal entities.

Yes — an original budget and a revised forecast are both useful, and keeping the original visible is what makes the comparison honest.

Yes, if you tag transactions with that dimension consistently. A departmental budget compared against partially-tagged actuals produces a variance that means nothing.

Publish it to the client portal, where they always see the current version, and save a PDF copy for your own records at the same time.

Yes — run it in Consolidated scope, or use the Consolidation report if eliminations matter, which they do for anything external.

A well-run small business close is a day or two, a few days after month end. If yours takes two weeks, the bottleneck is almost always upstream — transactions arriving late, or queues that were never worked during the month.

Closing weekly what you can close weekly is what makes the monthly close short.

If it is material and belongs to the closed period, that is what accruals are for — you should have accrued the expected cost. If it is not material, record it in the current period. Reopening a closed period should be rare.

Not technically, but statements you issue from an unlocked period can change afterwards. If you send numbers to anyone outside the business, lock first.

From approval policy. Anything crossing a threshold, matching a category rule, or explicitly submitted for review lands here. Everything below your thresholds posts without stopping.

Yes — My Tasks is your personal view, showing bill approvals assigned to you alongside blocked posting tasks and write-up engagements you own.

The item posts to the ledger. For a bill, approval authorizes the obligation; paying it is a separate step with its own controls.

You can dismiss one that genuinely should not post — a duplicate, or a document that was not a bill. Dismissal is recorded. What you should not do is leave exceptions open indefinitely, because each one is a transaction missing from your books.

It means they are incomplete for that item, which is exactly why the queue must be empty before you close a period.

Because a plausible guess that posts silently is worse than a stop that asks. Automation acts where it can be deterministic and stops where it cannot — that boundary is the reason the automation can be trusted at all.

Yes. Locks are per legal entity, so one entity can be closed through June while another is still open for July.

It is an administrative permission and should sit with very few people. Every lock and reopen is recorded with an actor and a timestamp.

No. The audit log is append-only, at every permission level. An audit trail that privileged users could edit would prove nothing.

Treat it as a serious incident. Note the entity and the sequence number reported, stop posting to that entity, and contact support immediately. Do not attempt to repair it yourself.

The ledger and its audit trail are retained for the life of the account. Deleting history would defeat both the chain and the reason for keeping books.

No. Tax registration and bank verification must be finished first, because a run that cannot deposit taxes creates a liability with a penalty attached.

Add their new location as a worksite and register in that state before their next payroll. Working in a state you are not registered in creates a filing obligation you are already late on.

Bank verification is usually the longest step, and state registrations can take longer if you are registering for the first time. Start at least two weeks before your first intended pay date.

Yes — each person has a self-service view of their pay history and documents, which removes most routine payroll questions from your inbox.

Add it to a regular run, or process an off-cycle run if it needs to be paid separately. Supplemental wages may be subject to different withholding rules — the run applies them, but be aware the net will not look like a normal cheque.

Anything outside the regular calendar: a correction, a final payment to a departing employee, a bonus paid separately, or a missed employee. It goes through the same approval and funding path.

Yes — payroll approvals can be routed to named approvers, and separating the person who enters hours from the person who approves the run is a control worth having.

Yes, and they can see their own pay history and documents in self-service, which is faster for them than asking you.

Do not ignore it — penalties accrue. Read what period and what tax it concerns, compare against the filings and deposits on record, and contact support with the notice if the records disagree. Many notices resolve as timing differences rather than genuine shortfalls.

Update it as soon as the notice arrives. Running payroll at last year's rate under-accrues the liability all year and produces a balance due at reconciliation.

Generally yes — an employee working in a state usually creates a withholding and unemployment obligation there, regardless of where the business is. Register before their first payroll.

Tax deposits are being coded to an expense account instead of clearing the liability. The liability was already recorded when the run posted, so coding the deposit to expense records the same cost twice.

Recategorize the deposits to the liability account and check whether the pattern goes back further than this month.

Yes, when a pay period spans month end. The wages earned before month end belong to that month even if the check date falls in the next one.

They receive both a 1099 for the contractor period and a W-2 for the employment period. Set the transition date clearly and make sure neither system reports the other's earnings.

Generally no — contractors handle their own taxes. Backup withholding applies in specific circumstances, most commonly where a valid tax ID has not been provided.

As current as the books. If your bookkeeper posted something ten minutes ago, it is there. Note that a month which has not yet been closed is still in progress — bills may be missing and accruals may not be posted, so a mid-month figure is a snapshot rather than a finished result.

Ask your bookkeeper. It is usually cleaner to send a report package for a specific purpose than to grant standing access to someone outside the business.

Raise it as a request in the portal rather than by email. The request is attached to your account, so whoever picks it up has the context, and the answer is recorded where you can find it later.

Timing. Checks you have written that have not been presented, and deposits that have not cleared, both create a legitimate difference. Reconciliation is what proves the two agree after timing.

Usually receivables: you earned it but have not collected it. It can also be loan repayments, equipment purchases, or distributions, none of which are expenses. The Cash Flow statement traces the gap line by line.

Yes, as PDF for sharing and CSV for your own analysis. If you send one outside the business, keep the PDF — it records the period and scope it was run for.

Say so rather than guessing. Your bookkeeper has options — checking a vendor statement, looking at the pattern of similar transactions, or coding it conservatively with a note. A guess presented as fact is the worst of the three.

Say so. The expense is usually still recordable, but documentation requirements vary by amount and type, and your bookkeeper needs to know whether the support exists.

Yes — requests work both ways, and asking there rather than by email keeps the answer attached to your account where you can find it again.

Upload it to the portal instead and tell them you have. Habits are hard to change and the request is usually convenience rather than a considered decision.

Documents attached to transactions are retained with the record. Retention policy for other documents is set in Document Storage — and record retention requirements are a tax and legal question worth confirming with your preparer.

You can set automation to propose everything and post nothing, so every item passes through human review. Most teams start there and relax it for the categories where the proposals prove reliable, which is a reasonable way to build confidence.

The same as when a person does: reverse and re-post. The original, the reversal, and the correction all remain visible. Nothing about machine error requires special handling.

Coding proposals improve as your history grows, because they are grounded in how you have actually coded that vendor. That is also why the first few weeks need more review than the months that follow.

No. Your data is used to answer your questions and do your work. See the data article for what is sent where and why.

Yes. Bulk upload handles batches, and multi-document scans can be split. Extraction runs per document, so one bad page does not stop the rest.

It is stored and attached to whatever record is created from it, permanently. Opening a bill from three years ago shows the invoice it came from.

Retention requirements are a tax and legal question rather than a software one. Ask your preparer — but a stored digital copy attached to the transaction is generally far easier to produce than a box.

No. It operates within your organization and the scope you are in, under the same access rules as your own account.

Yes — attach a file in the conversation and ask it to handle it. It runs the same intake and extraction path as any other document.

Ask it to show the records behind the answer. Most wrong answers turn out to be a question that was ambiguous about period or scope, and seeing the underlying transactions makes that obvious immediately.

You can work entirely manually — enter documents by hand, categorize without proposals, and not use the coworker. Talk to us if you need automation disabled at the account level rather than simply unused.

That automation reads their documents and proposes coding, that a person reviews anything ambiguous, that every action is logged and attributable, and that their data is not training material. Those four points cover nearly every question a client actually has.

The AI disclosures page on the public site covers the formal position, alongside the privacy policy and the subprocessor list.

Then the owner approves. That is the honest answer for a small business, and it is a real control — it is the absence of any second look that creates exposure, not the absence of a dedicated finance team.

Yes, for higher tiers. Both must approve before the item posts.

Create a bill just above each threshold and confirm it routes as intended, then void it. Ten minutes of testing beats discovering at year end that a rule never fired.

Attachments are part of the record's support and are retained with it. If a document was attached in error — the wrong invoice on a bill — attach the correct one and note the correction rather than expecting the original to disappear.

Storage limits depend on your plan. The screen shows current usage, and the practical constraint for most businesses is organization rather than volume.

Access by support staff is limited and logged. If you have a specific concern — a sensitive matter, a regulated context — raise it and ask what applies to your account rather than assuming either way.

Remove the suspected access immediately, rotate API keys, review the audit trail for the period concerned, and contact support. Do not wait for certainty — reversing a precaution is cheap.

The public site carries the privacy policy, security page, subprocessor list, acceptable use policy, AI disclosures, and data controls.

Issue a new one and revoke the old. Keys are hashed at rest, so nobody can retrieve the original — including support.

Revoke it immediately, issue a replacement, and review the audit trail for activity attributed to it. Revoking first and investigating second is the right order.

No. Unbalanced entries are refused at posting, through every interface. Build the complete entry and post it in one call.

Call `/api/v1/capabilities`. Reading it at startup is better than inferring permissions from failures.

Use a dedicated legal entity for integration testing. It keeps test data out of the entities you report from while exercising the same code path.

Failed deliveries are retried, and the deliveries view shows what happened to each one. For a long outage, reconcile by querying the API for the affected period rather than relying on retries alone.

Subscriptions are managed at the organization level; each event identifies the entity it belongs to, so filter in your receiver.

Fields that do not appear in your view — internal state, a provenance record — can change. Compare against what you hold rather than assuming every update is material to you.

A genuinely immaterial rounding difference on a foreign-currency account can be adjusted, with a memo explaining it. Anything else should be found — small differences are frequently two large errors nearly cancelling.

Find the cause first. If it was a coding error that did not affect cash, recategorize and move on. If cash was actually wrong, you may need to unlock from that point and work forward — which is why locking only a genuinely tied statement matters.

Feeds run behind the institution, often by a day or more, and some transactions only appear once they settle rather than while pending. If activity is more than a few days behind, treat it as a broken connection.

It happens, usually when a pending transaction settles at a different amount. Delete the uncategorized duplicate; if both were categorized, recategorize one to reverse it.

Pending authorizations often settle at a different amount — a restaurant tip, a fuel pre-authorization. Reconcile against the settled amount on the statement, which is authoritative.