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Do-it-today guides

No theory, no filler. Five short guides you can follow start to finish — each one leaves your books measurably better than it found them.

01~3 hours

Set up your books in an afternoon

One unhurried afternoon gets you from nothing to books you can trust. The order below matters — each step builds on the one before it.

  1. 1

    Create your company and set the basics

    Business name, address, currency, and the start of your fiscal year. Ten minutes, but get the fiscal year right — every report is framed by it.

  2. 2

    Pick a clean starting date

    Choose the first of a month — the first of the year is even better. Everything before that date stays in your old system or spreadsheet; everything after lives here. A clean line beats a heroic full-history migration every time.

  3. 3

    Enter opening balances

    As of your starting date: what was in each bank account, which customer invoices were still unpaid, and which bills you still owed. These three numbers are the foundation everything else reconciles against.

  4. 4

    Import your customers and vendors

    Bring them in by CSV — names and emails are enough to start. Only import the ones you actively work with; a contact list full of ghosts just slows down every dropdown.

  5. 5

    Set up sales tax

    Add the rates you actually collect, and they’ll be applied and tracked on every invoice from day one — no spreadsheet on the side at filing time.

    How sales tax works
  6. 6

    Send yourself a test invoice

    Create an invoice to your own email. Check the logo, the numbering, the tax line, and the payment button. If it looks right to you, it’ll look right to your customers.

    How invoicing works
02~30 minutes

Connect your bank and sort a week of transactions

The bank feed is where bookkeeping stops being data entry. Connect once, and transactions arrive on their own — your job shrinks to confirming where they belong.

  1. 1

    Connect through Plaid

    Live bank feeds start on the Starter plan. Pick your bank, sign in through Plaid’s secure window, and you’re done. The connection is read-only — Bokeping can see transactions but can never move money — and your credentials are never stored.

    About bank feeds
  2. 2

    On the free plan, or for older history, upload a CSV

    Free accounts bring bank activity in by CSV upload, and every plan uses it to backfill anything older than the feed reaches. Download the file from your bank and import it — duplicates are detected and skipped automatically, so overlap is safe. The rest of this guide is the same either way.

  3. 3

    Sort the obvious ones first

    Most transactions arrive with a suggested category — the coffee supplier is Supplies, the payout is Sales. Confirm the ones that look right in a quick pass before touching anything ambiguous. You’ll clear 80% of the list in a few minutes.

    How categorization works
  4. 4

    Set rules for the repeat offenders

    Rent, software subscriptions, fuel — anything that shows up every month gets a rule. Next month those sort themselves, and the feed gets quieter every week.

  5. 5

    Handle the leftovers honestly

    A few transactions won’t be obvious. Don’t dump them in “Miscellaneous” — flag them and ask your accountant, or note what you remember. Five honest minutes now beats an archaeology dig in April.

  6. 6

    Reconcile at the end of the week

    Check that your book balance matches the bank’s. When it does, everything downstream — every report, every total — is standing on verified ground.

    How reconciliation works
03~10 minutes

Send your first invoice and get paid online

From blank page to money on the way. The first invoice takes ten minutes; every one after takes two.

  1. 1

    Add your customer

    Name and email is genuinely enough. You can add addresses and payment terms later — don’t let a long form stand between you and getting paid.

  2. 2

    Build the invoice

    Line items with quantities and rates, tax applied automatically, your logo already in place. Describe the work so a stranger could understand it — vague line items are the number-one cause of “quick questions” that delay payment by a week.

    How invoicing works
  3. 3

    Set terms that match the amount

    Due on receipt for small amounts, net 14 for bigger work. Net 30 is a habit from the paper-check era, not a law — most customers simply pay on whatever terms you state.

  4. 4

    Turn on online payments

    Add a pay button so the customer can settle up from their phone the moment they open the invoice. Invoices with a payment link get paid dramatically faster than ones asking for a mailed check.

    About online payments
  5. 5

    Send it — and let the reminders run

    You’ll see when it’s paid, and gentle reminders go out on their own around the due date. The system stays persistent so you never have to write an awkward follow-up email again.

No theory, no filler — each guide leaves your books measurably better than it found them.

0415 minutes

A clean month-end in 15 minutes

If the books are kept current, closing a month is a short checklist, not a lost weekend. Here’s the whole routine.

  1. 1

    Clear the bank feed — minutes 0–5

    Categorize whatever’s left in the feed. If you’ve been sorting twice a week, this is a handful of items. Don’t agonize over edge cases — sorted-and-slightly-imperfect beats a pile of unsorted every time.

  2. 2

    Reconcile each account — minutes 5–8

    One comparison per account: does the bank’s closing balance match your books? A match confirms the month is complete. A gap is a search warrant — the exact difference tells you what’s missing or doubled.

    How reconciliation works
  3. 3

    Chase what’s open — minutes 8–11

    Past-due invoices get a friendly reminder with a payment link, today. Then scan the bills due in the next two weeks so nothing ambushes you.

  4. 4

    Read three numbers — minutes 11–15

    Revenue against last month, the expense line that moved the most, and cash today versus 30 days ago. Open the P&L, answer all three, done.

    About financial statements
  5. 5

    Write one sentence

    What changed this month and why — one line, anywhere you’ll find it again. Twelve of those sentences a year is a better management report than most companies ever produce. The full write-up of this routine is on the blog.

    Read the 15-minute month-end post
05~2 hours

Switch from spreadsheets or QuickBooks

Switching bookkeeping tools sounds like moving house. Done in the right order, it’s closer to moving desks — a clean cut-off date, your open balances carried across, and the old system kept as the archive for everything before it.

  1. 1

    Pick a switch date

    The first of a month, ideally the first of a quarter or year. Old system covers everything before; Bokeping covers everything after. Clean lines make your accountant’s year — literally.

  2. 2

    Export from the old system

    From QuickBooks, export your data as QBO or CSV files. From spreadsheets, save each sheet — customers, vendors, open invoices, bank activity — as its own CSV. Don’t clean anything yet; export first, fix later.

  3. 3

    Import into Bokeping

    CSV and QBO import are built in. Bring in customers and vendors first, then open invoices and unpaid bills, then bank history. Duplicates are detected and skipped, so importing generously is safe.

  4. 4

    Enter opening balances as of the switch date

    Bank balances, unpaid customer invoices, and unpaid bills as they stood on day one. This is the anchor everything reconciles against — worth double-checking against your last bank statement.

  5. 5

    Reconcile your first month, then compare

    At the end of month one, reconcile the bank and run a P&L. If the old system ran in parallel, the two reports should tell the same story. Once they do, you can retire the old books with confidence.

  6. 6

    Invite your accountant

    Accountant access is free on every plan — invite them on day one and they can sanity-check the opening balances before small issues become embedded ones. The full switching story lives on its own page.

    More on switching

Books you can follow a guide with

Start on the free plan and work through guide one this afternoon. Live bank feeds arrive with Starter; until then the same steps run on a CSV upload.

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