Each day

Answer the questions

1. Books opens on Books → This month: the month being worked (the one after the last month closed), its work in the order it is done: files, questions, deposits, lines with no category, the close. Each item has its button; the count beside each step is what can be done today. What cannot be done yet is folded under waiting, not for today, each saying what it waits for (a statement, next month's register, the owner). Then open Books → To answer: its tabs are This month (the month's questions you can answer today, grouped by the job each finishes), Backlog (earlier months, still open), Flagged and Answered. A question belongs to the month its answer belongs to: an invoice due in September and paid in October is October's. To reach one, type a name, an amount or a word of the bank's in its find box; it keeps its words when you come back, and Clear the find empties it.
2. Click a question to open it. It shows the bank lines or invoices it is about and, when it can, a Suggested answer.
3. If the suggestion is right, press its Answer button. If not, choose the client, vendor, Department or Organization yourself in its list and press its Answer: this … button (Answer: this client, this vendor, this Department or this Organization). An invoice that bills no SoW is asked its Department and its Organization: its income is in neither until it has them. A deposit that is not income (a loan, a refund, money moved between the company's own accounts): Answer: not income with its reason; a transfer the portal can see between the company's own accounts says so, with its reason chosen. A payment out to one of the company's own accounts that the portal does not hold (a savings account, say): Answer: take it off Waiting (Waiting is the list under the month's work on This month), writing that it is a transfer to that account. Any other line no client or vendor fits: write what it is and press Answer: take it off Waiting. A Department that nothing on the screen names: do not guess, flag it for the owner with what you know.
4. When several bank lines have the same wording, tick Make it a rule before you answer with a client or a vendor: every line with that wording, now and later, is answered the same way. A line with an open item of that client or vendor near its date stays a question, because it may pay that item. The tick counts for whichever Answer button you then press, the suggested one too.
5. A projection past its date (a line of the projection sheet, or an invoice only planned) is asked Did this happen, or when now?. Until it is answered it is not counted on Home or the Runway. If it happened, press Pair with this line beside its bank line. If it will happen, put the day in It will happen on and press Answer: it happens then: it counts again from that day. If it did not happen, press Answer: it did not happen.
6. An invoice or a bill past its date is still counted until it is paid: an invoice on Home's Delayed in, a bill as owed now. Press Pair with this line beside the bank line that paid it, or give it a new date, or cancel a bill with the reason. An invoice already raised is not cancelled: a duplicate of one already paid is written off on Books → Reconcile (Write off…); any other, flag it. If none of the lines listed paid it, do not pair one: give it a new date, or flag it for the owner. When the question says a larger deposit of the client still holds it, split that deposit instead. A planned invoice the workbook marked raised (an INV number, not QuickBooks' invoice) was never billed: if it is not to be billed, cancel it on Books → Invoices (Cancel…). The question names the invoice: type its number (INV… or QB …) in the find box.
7. A deposit that pays several invoices at once: press Split across invoices…, choose the client, put each invoice's amount (or Pay oldest first), Preview, then Save the split. The same button is on Books → Reconcile, which lists every client deposit still to split. The panel says where each invoice the bank's wording names is. A split is the chosen client's, and what is left over is kept as that client's payment in advance; it can also pay the invoices of clients billed under the same QuickBooks customer (they are listed with their client). A deposit that pays other clients: flag its question for the owner.

Every answer is kept with your name and the time. Each line still open is on Books → This month, month by month: choose a month there to see all of its lines.

Each month

The files, then the workbook check, then the close

1. The files. Download the month's bank statements from the bank's site, and its ADP payroll registers (one for each pay date) and ADP invoices, with the month's ADP benefit invoice, from ADP's. Upload ADP's files as ADP gives them (.xls, .xlsx or .csv): there is no need to open them or save them as anything else. The same invoice in another format is recognised as the same invoice and nothing more is kept. An ADP invoice whose total was saved without its figure is refused, and says so: open that file in Excel, save it, and upload what you saved. On Books → Files, upload them, each payroll register before its invoice (its first panel, This month's files, says for the month you choose what is posted, what waits and for what, what is missing, and what comes later: a pay period that runs past the month's end is paid after it, and its register is next month's): a statement with its own bank account chosen, a register or an invoice with the payroll account. A file chosen with the wrong kind of account is refused and nothing is kept: upload it again with the right one. Then Books → Files asks for anything it needs: a statement in a layout the account has not had yet asks you to check its columns (Confirm the columns; the file then waits under Ready to post). Each file under Ready to post says, on its row, what posting will do (the lines it adds, any it replaces or keeps, and whether the file looks like this account's); read it, then press the post button, which posts at once. Only a file that may be another account's asks first: then press Cancel and check which account the statement is from. A statement uploaded with the wrong account is moved, not uploaded again (the same file is recognised): under Ready to post press Not this account…, choose the account it is from and say why. A statement already rejected is reinstated first. An invoice whose register is not posted yet says which register to post first. A register or an invoice is posted in the background: it says Queued; after a moment, reload Files and it is under Posted (or, if it was refused, the reason is beside it). If posting is refused because your account cannot post files, ask somebody who manages users. After the first statement of an account, record the bank's balance on one date from a statement on Books → Close: until then no balance is shown for that account. A statement export with no balance on it: ask the bank (or the owner) for the balance on one date.
2. QuickBooks' invoices and payments. In QuickBooks, run two reports and export each as CSV: the Invoice List (by date) and Invoices and Received Payments. Upload both on Books → Files, the Invoice List first (the account chosen there does not matter: a QuickBooks file is its company's). Any other QuickBooks report is refused, and says so. The upload says what posting will do; on Books → Files press Post QuickBooks file, read what it says, and post it. An invoice replaces its own plan when only one plan can be its own (its client's one open plan of the same SoW and amount) and takes that plan's service months; QuickBooks' dates never decide the month of the work. Any other invoice asks, on To answer, which month's work it bills, and lists its client's open plans of its amount: answer with that month, and the plan of that month is replaced by the invoice. A customer that is no client yet is asked there too. Uploading the same export again adds nothing. A later export that overlaps an earlier one adds only the invoices that are new; where QuickBooks changed one already in, a new date is applied and kept in its history, and a new amount or customer is asked on To answer: say you have seen it, and the owner settles it. The payments report ties each payment to the bank deposit that carried it and pairs the deposit with the invoices it paid; post the month's bank statement first, and a deposit already paired is left as it is.
   Each file waits under Ready to post as Needs review until you post it; post the Invoice List before you post the payments report (it pairs payments with invoices the portal already holds). Once posted, a QuickBooks file is listed under Posted, in QuickBooks files posted, with what posting did. On Books → Invoices an invoice that took its plan's months shows them as Inferred from its statement of work; a month you answered shows as Set by hand. A month answered when no plan of it is open just sets the month. A customer you answer as a client on To answer has its QuickBooks invoices raised then, and each is asked the month of its work.
3. QuickBooks' bills (what the company owes its vendors). In QuickBooks, run Unpaid Bills and export it (as CSV, or the Excel workbook it gives), and upload it on Books → Files like the other two; press Post QuickBooks file, read what it says, and post it. Each open Bill is then owed from its due day until its payment is paired on Reconcile (Bills owed): projected cash and Home's outlook count it, and Books → Planned lists it. A bill is never a cost: the bank's payment stays the cost it is. A bill that has not reached QuickBooks yet is added on Planned (Add a bill…, with where it came from); when QuickBooks' bill of the same vendor and amount arrives, it replaces it, if it is the only one entered by hand; if there are two or more, say which on Planned. The same report again adds nothing; a bill no longer in the report is said, and stays owed until you pair its payment or cancel it on Planned, with why.
4. A month without the workbook (from December). The Annual Data Sheet is not kept any more, so the portal makes the month's costs from the bank: after the month's statements are posted, press Run matching on Books → Reconcile (it also runs each night). Each payment out that nothing else explains becomes its own cost record, in the month it was paid, with the tags the rules give it; a payment the rules do not tag is asked on Books → To answer instead: answer it there with its Category (from that month a payment's question takes its category, not its vendor; a category the list lacks is added first on Books → Settings, Tags), and tick Make it a rule if the vendor comes back. The answer makes its cost record at once. A vendor whose bill is for the month before it is paid (rent paid in arrears, say) is named once under Vendors paid in arrears on Books → Settings, with the reason; its payments then go in the month before. A payment the last workbook month already recorded keeps that record: nothing is counted twice. Payroll needs no file to be planned: Home's cash ahead counts each coming pay run as projected payroll (each person's cost over the last three complete months, on ADP's pay dates): open a month of the runway to see each item, said to be a projection. On Reports → Explore, counted as Projected and cut by Status lists them by month. When a run's register is posted, its projection gives way to it.
5. Payroll by person. On Books → People, choose the month. Each person's payroll cost goes to the Organization, Department and Project of their own dated shares; the last column says why any of it is unallocated. When it says no workbook name is confirmed, open the person (click the name) and, only if you know it, type the name the workbook's rows give that person (its Resource column) and press Confirm the name; if you do not know it, leave it: the owner confirms the names, and People says why the cost stays unallocated until then. To change where someone's cost goes from a day, use Change from a day: the day, each part's Organization, Department, Project, Geography and per cent (they must add to 100), the reason, then Preview and Save the change. A payroll line counts on its own date, the end of the pay period it pays, so a day moves the lines dated on or after it.
6. Send the owner the Annual Data Sheet, by email: the owner loads it. There is nothing to do for this in the portal. From the month the workbook stops (December), there is no workbook to send: This month's files no longer lists it. (QuickBooks' two exports are yours: upload them on Files, as above.)
7. Questions again. New files bring new questions: answer them as each day.
8. The workbook check. Work on the oldest month that is still open (Books → Close shows it, company by company: choose the company in Entity; the workbook check names the company whose month it opens on). On Reports → Workbook check, which opens on that month, read it by Organization and then by Department (the Cut). Each cell is matched, explained (each part of the difference named) or unexplained, with what it needs; a value marked the portal's only is one the workbook has no cell for. Open a cell's parts to see what its difference is made of. What a cell needs on the workbook's row is fixed in the workbook, which you then send to the owner again. A part marked payroll by person compares the workbook's rows of people on the registers with the payroll cost the portal allocates to the cell; it says how many of the lines are from people with no allocation, and Books → People says whose and why.
9. From December, a payment that pays a cost is dated by its bank month until you say otherwise: on Books → Close the month lists them (costs dated by their bank month: confirm or change). Press Confirm on each, Another month… to give one its month of work with why, or confirm them all at once.
10. The close. Only when the owner says the month is done: on Books → Close, for each company (choose it in Entity), press Preview close to see what closing freezes, then Close…. Months close in order, oldest first.

Planned payments and receipts

Plan what will be paid and received

1. Open Books → Planned. It lists every plan and every planned row: the ones made here, and the lines loaded from the projection sheet. Home counts each planned row from its day until a bank line settles it.
2. Press Plan a payment or receipt. Choose Payment or Receipt, the company, who it is paid to or by (a party, or write the name), its category (type it: Rent, Insurance, Taxes, India operations, ...; the field suggests the categories already used), the amount, and its Organization and Department. Once the party or the category is given, the form fills them from the workbook's latest expense row for it and says which row; tick The Organization and Department are right for this plan if they are, or choose others. With no such row they stay none: choose them if you know them, and do not guess.
3. Say how it Repeats. Once: the day it is expected. Every month: the first day in Day it is expected, and the last in Until (it shows once Every month or On chosen months is chosen); a row falls on that day of each month (on the month's last day when the month is shorter). On chosen months: tick the months, with the first day and Until. Write why it is expected (the lease, an invoice received, an agreement).
4. Press Preview: nothing is saved. It shows counted cash in and out, month by month, before and after. Then press Save. The plan's rows then show below, under The rows of one plan; Show every row lists every planned row again. A plan's rows button shows its rows at any time.
5. To change one row, press its Change…: give its new day or its new amount, and the reason, then Preview and Save the change. If it will not happen, give the reason and press Cancel this row, then confirm: a cancelled row is not counted, and is kept with its reason. Once a bank line settles a row it is no longer changed. History shows what a row was and why it changed. A plan itself is never changed: to change a whole plan, cancel its rows from the day it changes and add another plan.
6. A partner withdrawal planned ahead: a Payment, category Partner withdrawal, Organization the partner's own (marked partner). It is counted as cash going out on its day, and never as cost.

Planning needs the same permission as posting files; if it is refused, ask somebody who manages users.

Statements of work

Add a SoW, plan its invoices, change it when the work changes

1. Open Books → SoWs. It lists every SoW with its value, what is billed, what is still planned, what the bank has paid and what remains. Press New SoW to add one.
2. Fill its header: the client, its name, its number if it has one, the company that is paid, its Organization, Department and Project, its start and end, its value, its currency and its payment terms in days (the client's terms are filled in when it has them). The currency is kept from the first version; an INR SoW stays in INR.
3. Choose how it bills, then press Fill the schedule: Monthly spreads the value over the months by working days (a first or last month the SoW only partly covers bills its share), or leaves each month for you to type; Milestones takes each milestone's name, its amount or its share of the value, its due day (the day its invoice is planned) and the months its work is for (its due month if you name none); People at rates takes each person or role, the rate, whether the rate is a month's, an hour's or a day's, the quantity (people for a month's rate, hours or days a month otherwise), and from when to when. People at rates are estimates until each invoice is billed.
4. Each row of the schedule is one invoice: the months its work is for (several months are written 2026-11, 2026-12), its amount, the day its invoice is planned (for a month's work, the first day of the next month; for a milestone, its due day) and the day its payment is expected (the invoice day plus the terms; change it if the client pays otherwise). The last invoices and payments usually fall after the SoW ends; that is expected. Change any row, remove one, or press Add a row. The line under the rows says what they come to against the value.
5. Press Preview: nothing is saved. It shows, month by month, cash due in and accrual income before and after. Cash due in moves on each payment's expected day; accrual income does not move until an invoice is billed. Then press Save.
6. On a SoW's own page: its totals, any warning (the rows do not come to the value; a row's months of work fall after the end; more is billed than the value), its schedule, its people and its history. A billed, cancelled, paid or replaced row is locked. An open row has Change…: change it, give the reason, preview, save. The row it replaces is kept, cancelled, with the reason.
7. When the work changes (it runs longer, people join, a rate changes), press Amend…. Say the day it applies from and why, the company it is paid to, and its payment terms if none are recorded (a SoW loaded from the owner's workbook has none: ask the client's terms rather than leave them empty). To add people, press Add a person or role; to end one, give the day in their End on; for a longer SoW, change the end. When the work grows (people join, it runs longer), raise the value by what it adds: the line under the rows compares what is billed, what stays planned and the new rows with the value. People added to a monthly SoW keep it billed monthly; the months with them in it are estimates until billed. Press Fill the schedule: the months from that day keep what they billed and add or take off the people. Preview, then save. Every row billed, and every row of work before that day's month, stays as it is however late it is paid; the open rows of work from that month on are replaced and kept, cancelled, with the reason.

The SoWs loaded from the owner's workbook show the invoices they already have as a monthly schedule, with no payment terms recorded and no company named; amend one to add them (its Company paid and Payment terms). Adding, amending or changing a SoW needs the same permission as posting files; if it is refused, ask somebody who manages users. The owner reads every SoW on Books → SoWs and each client's on Reports → Clients.

Invoices

Every bill once: what needs you, what is owed, a wrong replacement

1. Books → Invoices lists every bill once: a plan of a SoW still to bill, or an invoice billed (in QuickBooks, or marked billed). A plan QuickBooks billed is not a row of its own: the invoice that replaced it says so under its Why, with where it came from and its Organization and Department. Each row says its state: To bill, Billed on a day and due on a day, Overdue so many days, Part paid, Paid on a day, Cancelled or Written off. Owed is what the client still owes on it: a plan owes nothing yet.
2. It opens on Needs you. A billed invoice with no month of work: press Set the month… and give the month its work is for (as on Questions: the client's one open plan of that month is replaced by it, and a different amount is said as billed against planned). An overdue invoice: chase it; one that will not be paid, when the owner says so, Write off… with the amount still owed, as a check, and why (its income stays in its months of work). All lists every bill, with the total of what is billed and owed.
3. A QuickBooks invoice whose SoW was found from the words of its customer line (not named exactly, and the client has more than one SoW) is suggested: it has no Organization or Department until you say. Press Confirm the SoW, or Change the SoW… to choose another with why; when a month's suggestions are all right, press Confirm the SoWs of that month once, on the Suggested tab (it lists the months of work the portal suggested, too).
4. Months that are still wrong: press Months… on the invoice, write one line per month (YYYY-MM and the amount; together they must be the invoice, to the cent) and why, then Record the months. Its Why says where its months came from: the workbook's rows of its number, its receipt, its statement of work, QuickBooks' date (a guess), or set by a person.
5. A plan the client will be billed for a month late: on its row (under All, a plan still to bill), press Move to next month… and say why. It is billed a month later and its expected receipt moves one month on; its months of work stay (change those with Months…). Its row says to which month and why.
6. A plan QuickBooks' invoice replaced wrongly (it bills another month's plan): open the invoice's Why, press Reverse the replacement… beside the plan it names, and say why. The plan is open again as it was before it was replaced: planned (owed, or asked Did this happen, or when now? on To answer if its date has passed), or raised if it had been marked raised. Then, for the plan that QuickBooks' invoice really bills: the portal has no button for the accountant to replace a plan. Name it, and the QuickBooks invoice, in the reversed plan's question with Flag for the owner (when it has one), or tell the owner directly. A plan whose replacement was reversed can be replaced once more, by the owner, and only by the QuickBooks invoice of its own month; if it is not to be billed, it is cancelled with Cancel….

Reconcile

Give each deposit and each paid cost its bank line

1. Books → Reconcile opens on the month being worked; All months lists everything still open. Earlier months that still hold something are named at the top.
2. A deposit that exactly one open invoice fits, to the cent, offers Give it to that invoice and says why it is the one. One press gives it, and names the client when the deposit had none. A deposit that pays several invoices, or none exactly, is Split across invoices….
3. A cost entered as paid with no bank line yet is paired with the payment of its amount. Money between the company's own accounts is confirmed under its own heading. Paired lists every pairing of the month, how it was made and on which day; a wrong one is undone with a reason.

Needs a tag

Give the month's untagged lines their Organization and Department

1. Books → Classify lists the month's lines with no Organization or Department, grouped by the bank's words, with the tags the same words carried before. Payroll lines are People's, not these.
2. Choose the tags, say why, and press Set: every line of the group takes them. Tick the rule to tag every line worded the same way from the first open day on; a closed month keeps its tags. A SoW with no Organization or Department is fixed on the SoW, listed below the groups.
3. Rules and tags themselves are on Books → Settings.

Contractors

A contractor, their terms, and where their cost goes

1. Open Books → Contractors and press Add a contractor. Choose how they are paid: C2C (paid as a company, by a bank payment) or 1099 (paid through ADP). Choose the company that pays them (the one whose bank or ADP account the payment leaves) and write their name.
2. In Their payments read, write words the line that pays them carries: for a C2C contractor, the company's name as the bank writes it on the transfer; for a 1099 contractor, the words ADP's debit carries (every 1099 run is one debit, so the same words serve each of them). The form says how many lines posted so far carry those words. A line that carries more than one contractor's words is split between them by their monthly cost at their rates. Words that many different kinds of line carry (the company's own name is on every transfer it makes) are refused as too broad: write more of the words, as the check shows how their lines read.
3. Give the Rate and what it is Per (an hour, a day or a month), How many a month (hours or days; not asked for a monthly rate), and how many days after the work they are paid (0 when they are paid in the month of the work). Their cost is counted in the month of the work: the payment's day less those days.
4. Give the day it starts (From), and Where their cost goes: a part's share (per cent), its SoW (or none), its Organization, Department and Project. Shares add up to 100: press Add a part to split. Write Why, and press Save. Nothing is saved if any of it is refused.
5. To change their rate, or where their cost goes, from a day: in the list press Change terms… or Change where the cost goes…, give the day and why. What was before ends that day and stays in the history; nothing is edited. A contractor who stops: End….
6. An employee who works on a SoW: under People on SoWs, choose the person, the SoW, the share of their cost to company it carries, and the day it starts. Their Organization, Department and Project stay as People has them.
7. A payment shared by several contractors is split by their terms and rates, and says so on its line under Payments shared by several contractors. When it was paid otherwise, press Change the split…, give each one's part (together the payment, to the cent) and why.

What only you can enter: each contractor (name, how paid, the words their payment carries), their rate and terms, where their cost goes, and which employees work on which SoW. Nothing in the books says it.

For the owner

What to read, and where

• Home is the cash position, this month or last: the money in and out, the lowest point, the next six months, and who owes the company. Its list says what needs a look; a check is on it only when one fails.
• Reports → Profit by month is what each month earned and cost, by company. Reports → Clients is each client's billing, what they paid and still owe, and when they usually pay; press a client's name to see that client alone, and a SoW's name to open its page under Books → SoWs, with its invoices and the receipts paired to them.
• Reports → Explore cuts the same lines any way (by client, Organization, Department, month and more); press a figure to see the lines behind it. Reports → Workbook check sets the portal's figures beside the workbook's.
• Reports → Checks says whether the figures are verified: a check that fails is first, with what it found. Every check by name, what they looked at and their history are under For audit.

For the owner

Margin by client and by SoW

Reports → Margin shows, for the months you choose, what each SoW billed, what the people and contractors on it cost, and the margin (billed less those costs), with the margin per cent. Choose By client to add each client's SoWs together. Filter by client, Organization (when shown by SoW) or a word; sort or filter any column from its heading. Press a client to see its months.

• Billed is the SoW's part of each invoice QuickBooks raised, in the months of the work. A plan is not billed: it is shown as Planned, not billed.
• People is each employee's share of their cost to company that month. A month whose payroll files are not all posted shows no figure for people or margin, until they are.
• Contractors is what the payments to contractors paid, for the month of the work. A month of work not paid yet is shown at the rate as Contractors expected, not paid, never in the margin; a client's months (press the client) name the contractors in it. A contractor's cost on no SoW is listed below the table.

For the owner

Only what is flagged goes to the owner

When a question is the owner's to decide, write what to decide in what should the owner decide? and press Flag for the owner. Home says how many are flagged, when any are, and To answer lists them under its Flagged tab, each marked Flagged for the owner. A flagged question stays open until the owner answers it. Nothing else is sent to the owner.

The other Books pages (Reconcile, Classify, Invoices, Enter) show the same lines another way. The month's work in part one needs them only where a step names one.