SutorBooks
Switching

Outgrowing invoicing-first software?

Invoicing-led tools are excellent at the thing they were built for. The question people usually arrive with is different: whether there is a real set of books underneath the invoices, and what happens the first time an accountant asks for a trial balance.

Read this part first

The things that would put some people off, said before the sales argument rather than after it.

  • There is no importer. Nothing you upload recreates your history. Moving means entering opening balances and starting from a date.
  • No payroll. We do not run it and we do not file taxes.
  • No automatic bank feeds. You download a statement file and import it.
  • US dollars only. The ledger refuses other currencies rather than half-supporting them.
  • Signup is not open yet, so this is a decision for later rather than today.

What "a real ledger underneath" actually buys you

Not a feature you use. A property of the system that shows up at the moments that matter.

Statements that cannot disagree

Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow are all derived from the same journal. They are not assembled from separate subledgers that can drift apart, so they cannot tell you two different things about the same month.

A year end that is a login

Trial balance, general ledger, adjusting entries, reclassification and a proper period close. Your accountant works in the same books you do — and their seat is free on every package, including Free.

History that stays put

Closed periods stay closed and posted entries are immutable. Corrections go in as reversing entries, so a report you ran in March still says in December what it said in March.

If your current tool already gives you all of that, this page is not for you and you should stay where you are.

And the thing people usually miss

Job costing is part of the books

Log hours against a job and bill them onto the invoice. Costs and revenue land on the same job, so profit per job is a report rather than a spreadsheet you keep beside the accounts and update when you remember.

For anyone quoting work rather than selling hours at a flat rate, this is usually the reason to move, not the double-entry argument above.

Job costing and time

Moving across

  1. Pick a cutover date — usually a quarter or year boundary.
  2. Export your reports from your current tool and keep them. That is your history.
  3. Enter opening balances so the ledger starts where you are.
  4. Enter the invoices and bills still outstanding.
  5. Reconcile the first statement after the cutover. If that reconciles, the move worked.