Knowledge Base
Answers to common questions
Quick answers on getting set up, banking, invoicing, closing your books, reports, and your account — organized by topic.
Getting started
- What is LedgerHelm?
- LedgerHelm is an AI-powered bookkeeping platform. It connects to your bank and your accounting software (or keeps full double-entry books natively), categorizes every transaction with AI, walks each month through a structured close, and produces the financial statements you and your accountant need.
- You can use it self-serve, add a managed bookkeeping service where a professional closes your books each month, or — if you're an accounting firm — run all of your clients on it under your own brand.
- Should I connect QuickBooks, Xero, or use LedgerHelm Books?
- If you already live in QuickBooks Online or Xero, connect it: your books stay there as the system of record and LedgerHelm adds AI categorization, anomaly detection, close workflow, and reporting on top.
- If you're starting fresh or want everything in one place, choose LedgerHelm Books — a full native double-entry ledger with invoicing, bills, inventory, projects, loans, fixed assets, multi-currency, and period locking built in.
- Switching from QuickBooks? The built-in importer brings over your customers, vendors, open invoices and bills, transaction history, and account balances in minutes.
- How does the free trial work?
- Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial — $0 today, cancel anytime. During the trial you get the full product, including the AI books diagnostic that shows you exactly what state your books are in.
- When the trial ends you pick a plan to continue. Your data is never held hostage: you can export everything at any time from Settings.
- What happens during onboarding?
- Onboarding collects the essentials: your business profile, how you keep books today (QuickBooks, Xero, or native), and your bank connections or first statement upload. From there LedgerHelm starts categorizing immediately.
- If you choose a managed plan, a scope-and-interview step matches you with the right service level before work begins.
Banking & transactions
- How do I connect my bank?
- Go to Bank Statements → Link account and authorize your bank through the secure Stripe Financial Connections flow. Your banking password is never shared with LedgerHelm.
- Once linked, posted transactions import automatically on a daily sync and are deduplicated against what's already in your books.
- Can I upload bank statements instead of linking my bank?
- Yes. Upload PDF, CSV, or OFX/QFX statements on the Bank Statements page. AI extracts the transactions — including from PDFs with no clean data layer — and they flow into the same review queue as bank-feed transactions.
- How does AI categorization work?
- Every imported transaction gets a suggested category with a confidence score. High-confidence suggestions can auto-approve; everything else waits in review. When you confirm or correct a category, LedgerHelm learns a rule so the same vendor is handled automatically next time.
- A deterministic guardrail also watches vendor history: if the AI suggests a category that contradicts a vendor's established pattern, the transaction is held for a human instead of posting silently.
- Can I create my own categorization rules?
- Yes. Rules match on vendor, and can additionally require a description phrase and an amount range — so "Amazon" under $50 can go to Office Supplies while larger Amazon charges wait for review. Rules you teach by confirming categories appear alongside rules you create explicitly, and you can manage them all on the Transactions page.
- How do I fix a miscategorized transaction?
- Open the Transactions page, find the transaction, and change its category. The correction is learned as a rule going forward. If your books are native and the period is already locked, you'll need to unlock it first (or ask a staff member to) — the lock exists to protect closed financials.
Invoicing & getting paid
- How do I create and send an invoice?
- On the Invoices page, choose a customer, add line items (products from your catalog or free-form lines), an optional discount and tax rate, and send. The customer receives a professional PDF and a secure online view link — no login required on their end.
- Invoice numbers are automatic (INV-0001 style) or fully custom if you have an existing numbering scheme.
- How do I record a payment against an invoice?
- Open the invoice and record the payment with its date, amount, and method. Partial payments are supported — the invoice tracks its open balance and moves to paid automatically when it reaches zero. On native books the ledger entries post automatically.
- What are sales receipts and customer deposits?
- A sales receipt records payment at the time of sale — no invoice needed. A customer deposit records money received before invoicing (a retainer or prepayment); it sits as a liability until you apply it to an invoice, at which point the accounting resolves automatically.
- How does Undeposited Funds work?
- When several customer payments get deposited to the bank as one batch, record each payment to Undeposited Funds, then create a bank deposit that groups them. Your books then show the single combined amount your bank statement shows — which makes reconciliation clean.
- Can I set special prices for specific customers?
- Yes. Price rules store a negotiated unit price per customer and product. When you invoice that customer for that product, the agreed price pre-fills — and you can always override it on the invoice itself.
- How do I bill time to a customer?
- Log time entries against a project and mark them billable with a bill rate. When you're ready, one click pulls all unbilled time onto a draft invoice for the project's customer — one line per entry — which you review and send like any other invoice.
Books, reconciliation & closing
- What is LedgerHelm Books?
- LedgerHelm Books is the native double-entry general ledger: a numbered chart of accounts, manual and system journal entries, trial balance, general ledger report, and a tie-out check that continuously verifies the books balance. Everything else — invoices, bills, payroll, inventory, loans — posts into it automatically.
- How does bank reconciliation work?
- Start a reconciliation for an account and statement period, enter the statement ending balance, and check off cleared transactions. The worksheet shows the cleared balance moving toward the statement balance in real time; when they match, finish the reconciliation and it's locked with a report. Reopening (with an audit trail) is available to staff if something needs to change.
- What does locking a period do?
- Setting a books-locked-through date prevents anyone from adding, voiding, or changing entries dated in the closed period — protecting financials you've already delivered. Administrators can override the lock for a specific posting when genuinely necessary, and every override is recorded in the audit log.
- What is the monthly close workflow?
- Each month moves through a pipeline — import, categorize, reconcile, review, delivered — with checklists and automated advances. Bookkeeping firms see every client's close status on one screen; self-serve users get the same structure for their own books.
- Can my accountant access my books?
- Yes. Invite your accountant by email from Settings and they get read-only access to your reports, documents, and transactions — plus the ability to propose adjusting journal entries. Proposals don't touch your books until you (or your bookkeeper) review and approve them, at which point they post with a full audit trail.
- How do I track a loan?
- Add the loan on the Loans page with its principal, rate, and term. LedgerHelm computes the full amortization schedule, and each payment you record posts the correct principal/interest split to the ledger automatically — so your liability balance and interest expense are always right.
- Does LedgerHelm track inventory?
- Yes. Products can be inventory-tracked with FIFO costing: purchases layer in at cost, sales relieve the oldest layers into Cost of Goods Sold, and quantity adjustments (shrinkage, counts) post the right entries. Reorder points flag products running low.
Reports & taxes
- What reports does LedgerHelm produce?
- Profit & Loss (with month-over-month comparison and a % of income view), Balance Sheet (with prior-month and prior-year comparison), Cash Flow, Trial Balance, General Ledger, AR/AP aging (summary and per-document detail), sales reports, project profitability, and custom date-range statements — all exportable as polished PDFs.
- Can reports be sent automatically?
- Yes. On the first of each month LedgerHelm generates the prior month's P&L and Balance Sheet and emails everyone on the account a link to them. You can opt out per user in notification settings.
- How does LedgerHelm help with sales tax?
- The Sales Tax Center tracks collected tax by jurisdiction, monitors economic nexus thresholds by state (including marketplace-facilitator rules), and reminds you before filing deadlines.
- What do I get at year end?
- A year-end package with your annual financial statements, a 1099 workflow for contractor payments (including W-9 collection and corporate exemptions), and — on native books — tax depreciation schedules (MACRS, §179, bonus) computed for your fixed assets.
Account, team & billing
- Can I add my team?
- Yes. Invite teammates to your workspace, or invite an external accountant with read-only access. Managed plans add a professional bookkeeper; firm plans give accounting practices a multi-client workspace with per-client staff assignments.
- Who owns my data? Can I export it?
- You do, always. A full export — transactions, documents, reports, and books — is available from Settings at any time, and nightly backups protect everything in between. See the Data Ownership page for the complete policy.
- How is my data protected?
- Data is encrypted in transit, sensitive credentials are encrypted at rest, every customer's data is isolated with database-level row security, and every meaningful action is written to an audit log. Bank connections go through Stripe and never expose your banking credentials.
- How does billing work?
- Plans bill monthly through Stripe, with add-ons for extra capabilities. You can change or cancel your plan anytime; your books remain exportable regardless of subscription status.
Still have a question?
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