What to connect first, what the app handles on its own, and the three small jobs that stay yours. No bookkeeping background needed.
When you signed up, you named your business and picked an entity type (the legal shape of your business: sole proprietor, LLC, and so on). That part is done. Now connect the accounts your money moves through: go to Banking, then Connected Accounts, and link your bank and cards. Once an account is linked, its transactions arrive on their own. You never type them in.
If an account can’t be linked, you can add it by hand on the same page and bring in its activity yourself. The bank connections guide covers all of it: what we can and can’t see, how far back we pull, and what to do when a connection drops.
Connect every account business money touches, including the personal card you sometimes use for business. When you link one, you tag it. Business means the account is used only for the business, so its spending posts straight to your books. Mixed means business and personal purchases share the account, so every transaction waits for you in the review inbox and you decide what counts. Nothing from a mixed account lands in your books until you say so.
So the answer is both: link the business card as business and the shared personal card as mixed. You capture the business purchases hiding on that personal card without your groceries ending up in your books.
Pick the tag with care. It’s set when you link and can’t be changed afterward; to switch, you’d disconnect and re-link. Individual accounts under a connection do have their own setting you can adjust later, which the bank connections guide explains.
Most of the day-to-day happens without you. Transactions arrive from your linked accounts on their own. On a business account, spending the app can sort with confidence is categorized and posted to your books, the running record of what your business earns and spends. Receipts you add are read and matched to the transaction they belong to. And your tax estimate updates as the numbers change.
Three jobs stay yours. Confirming the transactions the app wasn’t sure about, which wait in the review inbox. Adding receipts, since only you have those. And closing each month once you’ve looked it over. The next three sections take them one at a time.
About those tax numbers. They’re estimates drafted from your books, there to help you plan and set money aside. They’re not a filing and not tax advice, so confirm them with a tax professional before you file.
Under Inbox, then Approvals, you’ll find the transactions the app couldn’t sort on its own: an unfamiliar merchant, or anything from a mixed account. For each one you confirm a label (business, personal, split, or exclude) and it posts to your books. What each label does is covered in the transaction labels guide.
Check it once or twice a week. It’s usually a handful of items and a few minutes of work, and the page tells you when nothing needs review. Let it pile up and the pile itself becomes the reason you stop.
Receipts live under Inbox, then Receipts. Drop in a photo, or forward the emailed receipt to your ExpenseGhost email address, and the app reads the details and matches the receipt to the right bank transaction. A matched receipt is your proof the expense was real, sitting next to the transaction if anyone ever asks.
The habit that works is adding the receipt the day you get it, while you still have it. Every way to get one in is covered in the receipts guide.
Once a month, do a short pass: clear anything left in your review inbox, attach the receipts you’ve been sitting on, then close the month under Accounting, then Period Close. Closing locks the month so the numbers you reviewed stay put.
If you run the business solo, closing is yours to do. On a team, only the admin or finance role can close a month. What closing does, and why months close in order, is covered in closing your books.