Getting started
A chart of accounts, opening balances and your bank, designed to take an afternoon rather than a project.
Centilio LedgerLayered record
CENTILIO LEDGER / MONEY
What is accounting software, and how will Ledger work?
Short answers to what people ask about keeping the books, and practical guides that work whatever you use today. Questions about Ledger itself are answered as designed, because it has not shipped yet.
not shipped · wave 36 guidesuseful before Ledger shipsno sign-up needed
Product design preview · Ledger has not shipped. All features, screens and prices are proposals.
Ledger has not shipped yet.
Everything on these pages — the screens, the features, the prices — is Centilio Ledger as designed. Ledger has not shipped: it sits in the third wave of Centilio tools, and there is no app, no beta and no launch date yet. We would rather set out the whole design and say so plainly than publish a thin page and let you guess. Join the waitlist and you will hear first; if you need an invoice today, the free invoice generator works now, with no sign-up.
Topics
Start with the question you have.
In short: a program that records what a business earns, spends, owes and is owed, and turns those records into the reports and tax figures an owner, a bank and an accountant need. Cloud versions run in the browser, so the books live online and several people can work in them at once. Ledger is designed as one, built from the invoices, expenses and bank lines the business already has.
Everyday bookkeeping
The review queue, bank reconciliation and closing a month.
Tax
Sales tax or VAT by the line, summarised by rate and period.
Your accountant
Their role, the trail and the year-end pack.
Celia
What it proposes, what it flags, and what it never does: close a month, file a return or move money.
Billing
Per business, not per seat, with a Free plan for one bank account. All prices are proposed.
Guides
Six guides, useful whatever you keep the books in today.
Practical, short, and not about Ledger. They work with any set of books, including a spreadsheet.
How to set up your books in an afternoon
Most of setting up is deciding what you will not track. Start small and add accounts when a question needs one.
- Pick a start date: the first day of a month or quarter, ideally the start of your financial year.
- Get your opening balances from your last year-end — bank, what customers owe, what you owe, tax due. Your accountant has these.
- Start from a standard chart of accounts and delete what you will never use; add an account only when a report needs it.
- Connect or upload every bank and card account the business uses, including the one nobody mentions.
- Write down three rules you already follow — this supplier is rent, that one is software — so the first month needs fewer decisions.
How to reconcile a bank account
Reconciling is proving that the books and the bank agree. Do it monthly and it takes minutes; leave it for a year and it takes a weekend.
- Take the closing balance from the bank statement for the last day of the month.
- Match every bank line to an entry: a payment to its invoice, a debit to its bill or expense.
- List what is in the books but not yet in the bank, such as transfers still in flight.
- The difference should be zero. If it is not, look for a line entered twice, a wrong amount, or a line in the wrong month.
- Lock the month once it agrees, so nobody changes it by accident.
How to close a month
Closing is a checklist, not an event. The same five steps, every month.
- Clear the review queue: every bank line matched or explained.
- Chase missing receipts and purchase invoices while people still remember them.
- Reconcile each bank and card account.
- Compare profit and cash with last month, and ask why about anything that moved more than you expected.
- Close and lock the month, and write two lines on what happened, for you and for your accountant.
How to keep sales tax or VAT right through the year
Tax goes wrong at the line, not at the return. Get each line right and the return is arithmetic.
- Put the right tax code on every invoice and bill at the moment it is made.
- Keep the receipt or invoice for every purchase you claim tax back on.
- Check tax collected and paid by rate each month, not each quarter.
- Ask your accountant which rate applies to anything new before you sell it, not after.
- Keep the summary for each period with the return that was filed from it.
How to hand the books to your accountant
Much of what your accountant charges for is time spent understanding your books. Make that time short.
- Give them a login of their own rather than a password or a backup file.
- Close and reconcile every month of the year before they start.
- Write a short note on anything unusual: a loan, a large purchase, a customer who will not pay.
- Send the year-end pack: trial balance, ledgers, bank reconciliations, and the schedules they ask for.
- Agree how their adjustments come back, so next year starts from the books they signed.
How to move from a spreadsheet to proper books
A spreadsheet is a fine start and a poor finish. Move when it stops answering simple questions.
- Pick a clean start date rather than moving years of history.
- Bring over opening balances, not every old transaction.
- Keep the spreadsheet as a read-only record of the years before the start date.
- Run both side by side for one month, then stop updating the spreadsheet.
- Ask your accountant to check the first month-end before you trust the new books.
Questions
Quick answers.
What is the purpose of keeping books in a program rather than a spreadsheet?
A program enforces what a spreadsheet only hopes for: every entry balances, every bank line is matched, and closed months stay closed. It also produces the standard reports and tax figures without formulas that someone has to maintain.
How does bookkeeping in the cloud work?
The books live online rather than on one computer, so the owner, the office and the accountant work in the same records from anywhere. Bank lines arrive by feed or upload, entries are matched and reviewed, and the reports are always current.
What do accountants use?
Most accountants work in whatever their clients use, plus their own tools for tax and for running the practice, which is why a clean export matters more than a brand. Ledger is designed to give them a login of their own and spreadsheet and CSV exports of everything.
What is practice management for accountants?
It is what an accounting firm uses to run itself: clients, deadlines, tasks and its own billing. Ledger is not that; it keeps one business’s books, and an adviser invited by several businesses is designed to reach each of them from one login.
Which tool is best for small business books?
The one your accountant can work with, that handles your country’s tax, and that you will keep current every month. The compare pages set out where each common option fits, including where we lose.
Can your accountant use Ledger?
Yes, with a role of their own that sees the books and the audit trail without touching your other tools. It is included on every plan.
Will Ledger replace the tool I use now?
For many small businesses it is designed to; for others it will work alongside, with exports in the formats accountants expect. Nothing has to move until a clean start date.
When is Ledger available?
Ledger is in the third wave of Centilio tools, after Bill. There is no date yet; join the waitlist and you will hear before the announcement.
Contact
Still have a question?
Ledger is still being designed, so the questions you ask now shape it. Tell us how you keep the books today and what your accountant asks for at year end; the awkward requirements are the useful ones.
Next for you
What people use with Ledger.
The tools Ledger sits between. Two of them run today, so you can judge those while Ledger is built.
Every Centilio tool shares one record and one login with Ledger. About Centilio →
Hear first when Ledger opens.
Ledger is in the third wave, after Bill, with Spend and Pay beside it. Join the waitlist and you will hear before the announcement. Tell us how you keep the books today and what your year-end looks like; the awkward requirements shape the design most.