Help

Getting started

The Overview shows a short Getting started list: your bank and card accounts, bringing your books over, bringing in transactions, your invoice details, inviting your accountant and two-step sign-in. At sign-up, choosing what kind of business it is (construction, rental property, professional services, retail or a restaurant) adds the accounts that kind of business usually needs. Each step ticks itself off when it’s done, and any step can be skipped.

Bank and card accounts you named at sign-up are already set up. Add more, or remove one you haven’t used, in Accounts.

Switching from QuickBooks or Xero

Go to Business settings → Your data → Bring in books from QuickBooks or Xero. It walks you through each file in order: your chart of accounts, customers, vendors, products, then your full history, so your reports match your old books to the cent.

In QuickBooks Online, the files come from Settings ⚙ → Export data (choose all dates) and from Reports (Journal, Trial balance, Invoice list, Transaction list by vendor), as Excel or CSV. You can drop in the ZIP file QuickBooks gives you; BruinLedger picks out what each step needs. Nothing is read by AI and nothing is sent anywhere else: files are read in your browser.

Bank and card accounts are reconciled through the day you switch, and invoices and bills still open come over so you can record their payments in BruinLedger.

Bringing in transactions

Everything starts in To approve, and nothing is added to your books until you approve it.

• Connect your bank to bring transactions in automatically.Coming soon
• Upload a bank or card statement (PDF, CSV, or the .QBO / .QFX / .OFX download most banks offer), a receipt, or a bill. BruinLedger reads it and suggests a category for each line.
• Email receipts and bills to your business’s own address.Coming soon

Pick a category for anything BruinLedger couldn’t guess, then Add. BruinLedger remembers your choices, and you can write your own rules in To approve → Categorization rules, where you can also let a rule you trust add its transactions automatically. For a payee it hasn’t seen before, Claude suggests a category (marked Suggested); you can turn this off in Business settings. Lines that look like something already in your books are left out, so nothing is counted twice.

A payment that matches an open invoice or bill is recorded as that payment, not as new income or spending.

Moving money between your own accounts (paying the card from checking, a transfer to savings) shows up on both. BruinLedger pairs the two sides and marks them Transfer; adding either one adds the transfer once and settles the other.

A receipt you snap and the card or bank line for the same purchase pair up too (Receipt found): adding either one adds the purchase once, with the receipt attached.

Receipts

Approve a receipt in To approve and it’s attached to the transaction it makes. If the purchase is already in your books (usually from the bank feed), choose Attach to existing transaction instead. You can also attach a file to any transaction from its ⋯ menu.

BruinLedger reads up to 500 PDFs, photos and emailed receipts a month for each business. CSV files don’t count. Business settings → Reading documents shows where you are; an owner can choose to keep reading past the allowance at a small charge per document.

On your phone

Open BruinLedger in your phone’s browser and add it to your home screen: on an iPhone, tap Share in Safari, then Add to Home Screen; on Android, choose Add to home screen or Install from the browser’s menu. The icon opens straight to Snap a receipt: take a photo and it’s read for you and waits in To approve, with what’s waiting and your cash on hand below.

Invoices and getting paid

Add your address, email, logo and how customers can pay in Business settings → On your invoices. Then New invoice, and email it from BruinLedger or share its link. Customers see a clean page and a PDF; you see when they’ve opened it.

Send an estimate as a PDF; customers accepting it online is Coming soon. Then Create invoice turns it into an invoice, or Bill in parts bills it as the work is done (say 50% complete), with retainage held back if your contract calls for it, released when the job’s done. An estimate can also ask for a deposit: record it when it arrives (paying it online is coming soon). It’s held as owed to the customer, not income, until the invoice uses it.

A page for each customer with every invoice and their statement is Coming soon. Meanwhile, a customer’s statement PDF is on their page in BruinLedger.

Customers paying invoices online by card or bank transfer is Coming soon.

Record payments as they come in (part payments are fine), or turn on automatic reminders for overdue invoices in Business settings → Email.

Cash ahead

The Overview sums up last month in brief: profit against the month before, what changed most, cash and anything overdue. Reports → Monthly summary has the full version as a one-page PDF to send a lender or partner.

Cash forecast (in Reports) shows the next 13 weeks: cash today, then what’s due in and out each week from open invoices and bills and anything set to repeat, and says if cash would go below zero. Spending without a bill isn’t in it.

Reconciling

When you add a statement (a PDF or a bank download), To approve offers Reconcile now with its end date and ending balance filled in.

Once a month, choose Reconcile next to the account in Accounts (accountants: the Overview), and enter the statement’s end date and ending balance. Tick the transactions that appear on the statement until the difference is zero, then finish. A finished reconciliation keeps those transactions from changing by accident.

Your accountant and your team

Invite people in Business settings → People. An accountant gets the accountant view (journal, general ledger, trial balance) and can ask you about any transaction; you answer from your Overview. They can also ask for a statement, a receipt or an answer: you’ll see it on your Overview, and can send it from the link, without signing in. Team members see the everyday screens. Read-only people, such as a lender or partner, can see the books and reports and change nothing.

Turn on two-step sign-in in Business settings: a code from your phone as well as your password.

Month end and year end

Month-end (from the Overview in the accountant view, or Close the year) checks a month over: reconciled, categorized, questions answered, schedules recorded. Notes on accounts keep the working papers, and signing off records who reviewed the month and when.

Tax summary (in Reports) adds up the year line by line for Schedule C, Form 1120-S or Form 1065: choose the return and where each account goes in Tax lines (BruinLedger suggests a line from each account’s name). Reclassify (in Accounts and the general ledger) moves many transactions from one category to another at once. Close the year (in Reports) checks the year over, then locks it so filed numbers stay put. If your year doesn’t start in January, set it in Business settings.

Estimated taxes (from the Tax summary) shows the four federal payments for the year and what’s left on each. The recommended plan is last year’s tax (or 110% at higher incomes) in four parts, which avoids the IRS underpayment penalty; you can also use a share of profit or your accountant’s amounts. Michigan has its own plan on the same page. Record each payment as you make it.

Prepaid and deferred (in Accounts) spreads a bill paid ahead, like a year of insurance, or a contract a customer paid ahead, over the months it covers, so each month’s profit is right.

Loans (in Accounts): enter a loan’s terms and BruinLedger builds the payment schedule. Categorize each payment to the loan in full; BruinLedger moves the interest part to Interest expense each month.

Fixed assets (in Accounts) keeps equipment, vehicles and buildings the business owns. BruinLedger works out the monthly depreciation for your books (one click records it), the tax depreciation for your return, and the gain or loss when you sell one.

Health check (in Accounts) scans the books for likely mistakes: transactions in twice, personal spending in business categories, one vendor under two names, balances below zero, dates with a mistyped year. Each comes with where to fix it, or mark it not a problem.

Cash or accrual: Profit & loss, Balance sheet, Trial balance and Tax summary switch between the accrual basis (sales and bills count when they’re dated) and the cash basis (they count when they’re paid). Choose which one reports open on in Business settings.

Your data

Your books are yours. Business settings → Your data → Download everything gives you every account, transaction, invoice, bill and contact as spreadsheet files, whenever you like. History shows every change to your books, who made it and when.

Still stuck?

Email support@bruinledger.com and say what you were doing. If BruinLedger showed a reference code, include it.