Backbuild Finances: Accounting in the Backbuild Workspace

Backbuild Finances is the accounting app built into the Backbuild workspace. You keep a real double-entry ledger, send invoices and record what customers owe you, enter bills and expenses, reconcile your bank, and read the statements that tell you how the business is doing, in the same place as your documents, email, and files. This page teaches what Backbuild Finances does today, how your books are stored and protected, and what it does not do yet.

Bookkeeping, on Every Plan

The core books are included on every Backbuild plan, including Free, the same way Mail, Calendar, and Files are. There is no separate accounting subscription and no per-feature add-on for double-entry accounting, bills, payroll recording, bank reconciliation, and financial reports. The Free plan includes those and up to five invoices a month; unlimited invoicing, sales-tax tracking, and connecting Stripe to record payments come with the paid workspace tiers. Current plan allowances are listed on the pricing page. Because the ledger lives inside the workspace, an invoice, a receipt, and the contact you billed all share one identity and one set of roles.

A Real Double-Entry Ledger

Backbuild Finances is double-entry accounting, not a single-column expense list. You get a chart of accounts you can organize, a general ledger that every transaction posts to, and journal entries you can write and reverse. Each invoice, bill, and payment posts a balanced entry behind the scenes, so your debits and credits always agree and your statements reconcile to the ledger.

  • Chart of accounts: asset, liability, equity, income, and expense accounts you create and organize.
  • General ledger and journal entries: every transaction posts a balanced entry; write and reverse manual journals when you need to.
  • Accounting periods and method: the ledger is the source of truth for every report.

Invoicing and Accounts Receivable

You bill customers and track what they owe. Create an invoice, record a payment against it, and watch the receivable clear. Customers, their balances, and their history live alongside the rest of the ledger, and an accounts-receivable aging view shows you who is overdue and by how long. Unlimited invoicing is part of the paid workspace tiers; the Free plan includes up to five invoices a month.

  • Invoices and payments: issue an invoice, apply a payment, and clear the receivable.
  • Customers: a record per customer with balance, history, and statements.
  • A/R aging: current, one-to-thirty, thirty-one-to-sixty, and older buckets, with days overdue.

Bills, Expenses, and 1099 Contractors

On the payables side you enter bills and expenses, track what you owe each vendor, and record payments against them. Vendors you pay as contractors can be flagged for 1099 reporting, and a 1099 report totals what each one was paid for the year, so the people who need a form are easy to find at year-end.

  • Bills and vendor payments: record what you owe and pay it down, with a payables aging view.
  • Expenses: capture a cost and post it to the right account.
  • 1099 contractors: flag a vendor for 1099 and total the year's payments for reporting.

Bank Reconciliation

You reconcile an account to its statement: bring in your transactions, clear each line until the difference is zero, and complete the reconciliation, which locks the cleared lines and carries the beginning balance forward to next period. Reconciliation is the check that your books match reality, and it is part of every plan. Importing transactions and matching them is supported today; automatic live bank feeds through an aggregator are rolling out, and until that is signed off you bring transactions in yourself.

Financial Statements and Reports

Backbuild Finances produces the statements a business and its accountant expect: a profit-and-loss statement, a balance sheet, and a trial balance, each drawn straight from the ledger for any period you choose. Reports are where the daily entries turn into the picture of the business.

  • Profit and loss: income and expense for a chosen period.
  • Balance sheet: assets, liabilities, and equity as of a date.
  • Trial balance: every account's debit and credit total, to prove the ledger balances.

Payroll: Recorded in Your Books

Being precise about payroll matters, because overstating what a system does with payroll taxes causes real harm. Backbuild Finances records payroll: it calculates a pay run, including employee and employer tax amounts, and posts a balanced entry to your ledger so payroll shows up correctly in your books. What it does not do is file or pay your payroll taxes for you. It is not a managed payroll-tax service that submits federal and state returns, remits the tax, or carries a tax-penalty guarantee. If you need a service that files and pays payroll taxes on your behalf, use a dedicated payroll provider and record the results here, and weigh that difference honestly.

Sales-Tax Tracking

You can set up tax rates, apply tax on invoice lines, and run a tax-liability report that tells you what you have collected and owe. Sales-tax tracking is part of the paid workspace tiers. It tracks the tax you charge and owe; automatic rate determination by address and automated filing are a separate, later capability and are not part of Backbuild Finances today. For now, sales tax is tracked, not filed for you.

AI That Reads Documents but Never Posts on Its Own

Backbuild is AI-native, and accounting is exactly the place to be careful about it. The AI assistant can read a receipt or a bank statement and draft the entries it suggests, but nothing posts automatically: extracted data is marked for your review, and you decide what goes into the ledger. The assistant reaches your books through governed tools, not raw database access, and the same per-organization roles that protect the rest of the workspace apply. An automated bookkeeper that posts unreviewed entries is precisely what Backbuild Finances does not do.

Sales Documents: Estimates, Purchase Orders, and Inventory

Backbuild Finances carries the sales and purchasing documents a growing business needs, not only the ledger. You can raise an estimate or quote, track its status, and convert it into an invoice when the customer approves, including progress invoicing that bills a job in stages. On the buying side you can raise a purchase order and convert it into a bill when the goods arrive. And you can track inventory items and their cost of goods sold, with stock adjustments that post to the ledger, so a product business keeps quantities and margins in the same books as everything else.

  • Estimates and quotes: raise, track, and convert to an invoice, with progress invoicing for staged jobs.
  • Purchase orders: raise a purchase order and convert it into a bill.
  • Inventory and cost of goods: track items, stock adjustments, and cost of goods sold in the ledger.

Budgets, Classes, Time, and Projects

Beyond the core ledger, Backbuild Finances includes the planning and tracking tools a growing business reaches for, on every plan. You can build a budget and read a budget-versus-actual comparison to see where you are against plan. You can tag transactions with classes and locations, so a single set of books can report by department, location, or line of business. And you can track time and mileage, approve entries, and roll them up for billing and job costing on projects. You can also read consolidated reports across sets of books and build a custom report from a saved report definition. These live in the same ledger as everything else, so a tracked hour or a class-tagged expense flows into the same statements.

  • Budgets: set a budget and compare it against actuals for any period.
  • Classes and locations: tag transactions to report by segment.
  • Time and mileage: record, approve, and summarize time and mileage for billing and job costing.
  • Consolidated and custom reports: read consolidated reports and build reports from saved definitions.

Driving the Books Over the API

The whole of Backbuild Finances is drivable over the same public REST API as the rest of the platform, so a script, an integration, or an AI agent working through governed tools can create accounts, post journal entries, raise invoices, record bills, and pull reports. Access uses a platform API key scoped to your organization and its roles, so the API enforces the same permissions as the app. Finance events can also be delivered to an endpoint you host as HMAC-signed webhooks, with a delivery log and zero-downtime signing-secret rotation, so your systems react to changes in the books without polling. For the endpoint catalog, see the API reference.

How Your Books Are Stored and Secured

Your financial data is scoped to your organization and isolated from every other organization on the platform. Access is governed by the same roles and permissions as the rest of the workspace, so who can view, create, or administer the books is a policy you set, not an all-or-nothing switch. Every write is recorded in an append-only audit trail, and sensitive identifiers such as a tax ID are held in an encrypted vault and revealed only to those you authorize. The books are backed by the same distributed database and row-level security that isolate the rest of your organization's data.

Where Backbuild Finances Fits, and What It Does Not Do Yet

Backbuild Finances is the right choice when you want real double-entry books, invoicing, bills and expenses, bank reconciliation, and financial statements, free on every plan and inside the same workspace as your email, documents, and files, rather than a separate accounting subscription that charges more as you grow. It keeps the daily bookkeeping honest and in one place.

Being equally plain about the gaps: Backbuild Finances does not file or pay your payroll or sales taxes for you, does not yet take a customer payment online through a pay-by-link, and a customer portal for clients to view and pay their own invoices, deeper multi-currency selling, and point-of-sale are on the roadmap rather than shipped. It has no native mobile app; you work in the Backbuild web app and the Windows and macOS desktop apps. And it is a newer product without the decades-long track record and the vast network of accountants who already know an incumbent like QuickBooks. If your first requirement is managed tax filing, an established accountant ecosystem, or a large third-party app marketplace, weigh that difference carefully. For a feature-by-feature view, see the Backbuild Finances versus QuickBooks comparison.