About
Applies to: Finaloop Core
During your first weeks with Finaloop Core, Finaloop's automated bookkeeping and accounting product, you complete a list of tasks that give us the items we need to complete your books. Once you've signed up and connected your accounts (see Signing up for Finaloop Core and connecting your accounts), here are the tasks we'll ask you to complete and what to expect during your first weeks with Finaloop.
Finaloop lists these tasks in your setup checklist, Getting started: it's where we ask for information only you have, like a missing account or loan details. If you've got questions, feel free to reach out to [email protected]. We're here to help!
1. Your free trial at a glance
Here's what to expect during your 14-day free trial. You can see the same timeline anytime in Getting started by clicking See your trial overview.
Onboarding day: our accountants start working on your books. Book a 1:1 call for a financial review, and knock out a few quick setup tasks.
Day 2: your free P&L and Cash Flow reports are ready for review. Our accountants will email you within 48 hours when they're ready.
Day 2-14: explore Finaloop, review your financials with your Finaloop accountant (optional), and finish any open tasks.
After subscribing: you get unlimited expert support, your historical financials plus your Balance Sheet, and tax-ready books.
2. Your Getting started tasks during the trial
Getting started is your to-do list for the items we need to complete your books. You'll find it at the top of the sidebar. It has three sections:
Initial setup: the stores, apps and banks you connected during sign-up. Connect anything you missed here.
Get flawless books: your To-do items. Each task tells you about missing information we need from you, with a button to fix it.
Explore Finaloop: a tour of what you can do in Finaloop.
Your tasks appear once you've finished the initial setup. Here we'll run through the most common tasks during your onboarding. Your specific tasks may be slightly different, depending on the needs of your business.
① Getting started in the sidebar, ② Initial setup, Get flawless books and Explore Finaloop, ③ See your trial overview.
Note: If your account doesn't show Getting started, your tasks are in My missions instead. See Understanding my missions.
Find the right inventory method for you
During the trial period, you'll get a task to set your inventory method: how Finaloop records your cost of goods sold (COGS), meaning what the products you sold cost you.
Purchase-based: COGS are recorded in your P&L when you purchase inventory.
Sales-based: COGS are recorded in your P&L when you sell inventory, based on the cost per unit you enter for each product (SKU).
You can read How to choose your COGS tracking method in Finaloop to learn more about each method. Don't worry, you can always change it later if you prefer another method.
To set your inventory method:
In the sidebar, click Getting started, then open Get flawless books.
On the Find the right inventory method for you task, click Let's go.
Answer a few quick questions, such as How do you fulfill your orders? and Do you hold over a set amount in inventory on average?, clicking Next after each one.
Check the method we suggest and click Confirm.
You'll see Your inventory tracking method is set to your method. Depending on your selection, the next steps to getting your inventory and COGS set up will vary. Want Finaloop to track every unit and calculate COGS for you? Check out InventoryIQ, our inventory add-on, after onboarding.
① The answers, ② Next.
Review uncategorized transactions
Categorizing transactions is an important part of the onboarding process, but it's also an ongoing action that will arise from time to time.
Finaloop automatically categorizes most of your transactions. Our team of experts then reviews the remaining ones to see if we can categorize any without further input from you.
Each month, the list of transactions we need help with will get smaller, but for the first month or two, expect that we'll need input from you as we learn more about your business. If we find transactions that we don't recognize, you'll see the Review uncategorized transactions task.
To categorize unrecognized transactions:
On the Review uncategorized transactions task, click Review. Or, from the sidebar, go to Transactions and select the Waiting for your input checkbox.
Click Waiting for your input on a transaction or vendor row to open the categorize window.
Choose the correct category in Select category manually.
Click Apply once if the category only applies to this specific transaction. Click Apply always to assign all transactions from the same vendor to the category you've just selected.
① Waiting for your input checkbox, ② the Waiting for your input tag.
To learn more, check out Categorizing & reviewing transactions.
Review unmatched money movements
Finaloop automatically matches transfers and payouts to ensure everything is reconciled.
For example, if there are transfers from one bank to another, or there is a credit card payment from your bank, we'll automatically match them to ensure everything is reconciled with no duplications.
If there are unmatched transfers or payouts, it's often because there is a missing bank account or app. When that happens, you'll see the Review unmatched money movements task (or Connect missing bank accounts) asking you to connect the missing account or tell us about it.
Click Review on the task to open the Anomaly Detector. To learn more, check out Unmatched payouts and transfers.
Fill in loans details
During the onboarding process, we'll ask you to provide the details of your business loans, so we can ensure all the interest and loan details are properly added to your books. On the Fill in loans details task, click Review to open Loans and add the missing details. To learn more, check out Managing Loans in Finaloop: Detection, Categorization & Reporting.
3. Additional tasks
In addition to the specific tasks you'll see, please add existing vendor bills and B2B invoices, so your books include all the details.
Add vendor bills
If you use Bill.com or Settle to manage your vendor bills, please connect them to Finaloop. If not, follow these steps to add bills to Finaloop:
Go to Vendors → Bills from the sidebar.
Click Add Bill.
Upload the bill file where it says Extract from file, or enter the bill details.
Click Save.
Add B2B invoices
You might have B2B invoices that are not synced directly from Shopify, PayPal or Stripe. You can add these invoices to Finaloop:
From the sidebar, go to Customers → Invoices.
Click Create invoice.
Complete the invoice details.
Click Save.
4. Subscribe to Finaloop
After the tasks are completed, it's time to subscribe to Finaloop!
To subscribe:
In the banner at the top of the page (Your trial ends in a number of days), click Subscribe. The Billing page opens. Once you have no open tasks, Getting started also shows a Subscribe now button.
You'll see the two parts of your subscription payment:
Bookkeeping: your ongoing subscription, based on your annualized gross revenue, with a 10% discount if you choose annual billing. For more on pricing, see Finaloop plans and pricing.
Catch-up: during the trial, your books are prepared from the date you signed up plus the two previous months. To rebuild your books from January 1 of the current year, there's a one-time catch-up fee based on your monthly subscription and the number of months to catch up.
For example, if you sign up on June 1, your free trial books are prepared from April 1. Catching up January 1 to March 31 is covered by the catch-up fee. We highly recommend taking both the bookkeeping subscription and the catch-up, so your books for the full year are up to date and in one place, avoiding discrepancies and tax headaches when you file your tax return.
Click Checkout. You'll be taken to an external payment screen to make the payment.
When the payment goes through, you'll see Welcome aboard!. Once you subscribe, more reports and features in Finaloop are unlocked, including getting your Balance Sheet up to speed.
Important: Only account admins can see the Billing page. If you can't open it, ask your account admin to subscribe.
5. Missions after you subscribe
After you subscribe, your remaining tasks move to My missions in the sidebar. Here are some of the one-time missions (tasks in My missions where we ask you for information we need) we'll need to complete your onboarding.
Depending on which inventory method you chose, you may also have additional missions to get your purchase orders or costs updated.
Upload historical transactions
Your bank and credit card connections sync your transactions going forward, plus a limited amount of history that depends on your bank. As part of the catch-up process, we'll ask for a one-time upload of historical transactions for the periods we can't sync automatically, in the Upload historical transactions mission.
Build the Balance Sheet
After you subscribe, you'll see a mission called Let's build your Balance Sheet. In this mission, we ask you for the historical data we need to make sure your Balance Sheet in Finaloop is completely up to date.
① Let's go.
Typically, we'll need your balance sheet as of the close of the previous year and your last tax return. You'll also see a questionnaire with some important questions about your account balances. Once we've got that, we'll build your Balance Sheet.
Once you complete the checklist, our review usually takes 4-6 weeks.
The mission may be slightly different depending on your legal entity structure, so that you comply with the relevant reporting requirements.
Great! Your onboarding process is complete. Now you can enjoy real-time, accurate data by logging in to Finaloop whenever you want.
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