Ofivio Books, explained: a ledger the work writes for you

Ofivio Books is a real double-entry ledger — chart of accounts, journals, trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet. That part is unremarkable, and deliberately so: a ledger that invents its own conventions is a ledger your accountant cannot sign. What is different is where the entries come from.

The entries write themselves

In most small firms, bookkeeping is a second job performed weeks after the work. An invoice is raised in one place and typed into the books later; a payroll run is calculated in a spreadsheet and journalled by hand; a certified payment is remembered. Every one of those steps is where the ledger and reality part company.

• —An invoice raised against a milestone creates its own receivable
• —A goods receipt against a purchase order creates the payable
• —A payroll run posts wage cost to the projects the people were actually assigned to
• —A certified interim payment creates the receivable and its retention entry together
• —A rent receipt posts against the tenancy, with the deposit held as a liability rather than booked as income

None of that is a reporting feature. It is what happens when the operational products and the ledger are the same system rather than two systems with an export between them.

What is in the box

Accounting, HR, Finance.

Every Ofivio product also includes the roster and the invoice/expense side free, because no company runs without people and money and charging twice for the basics is how platforms make enemies. What Books adds is the formal ledger underneath them.

More than one set of books

Accountants, consultants and management firms keep books for their clients as well as their own. Books holds a set per client, with the separation enforced below the application rather than by a dropdown someone can change by accident, and the firm's own accounts sit alongside them rather than mixed in. This is genuinely awkward in most small-business accounting software, which assumes one company per login.

What it does not do

• —It does not file your returns. It produces the books; your accountant files from them, and any vendor claiming otherwise for your jurisdiction should be asked to show you.
• —It does not consolidate multiple legal entities with intercompany elimination.
• —It is not a bookkeeping service. Nobody at Ofivio does your data entry.
• —It does not replace a retail stock ledger — that is Ofivio POS, which posts into it.

Who it fits

Firms of roughly ten to a few hundred people whose work already happens somewhere — ideally in another Ofivio product, because that is where the automatic entries come from. If your books are fine and your operations are the problem, start with the operational product instead and add this later; nothing has to be bought in advance.