FinBot: setting up your books
Published and maintained by Adtro Media
FinBot keeps your accounts: Assistants > FinBot > Books. Before its figures can be trusted it needs five facts. The Dashboard shows a "Finish setting up your books" checklist until they are in, and each item has a button that opens the place to give it:
- What kind of business this is — sole proprietor, partnership, Pte Ltd or LLP. Choose it in "What you have to file" on the Dashboard. Tax, ACRA and every filing deadline are worked out from it.
- Your UEN and financial year end — Settings > Business profile > Tax & Registration.
- Whether you are GST-registered, and from when — same place. A business that is not registered cannot charge GST, so FinBot will refuse an invoice that adds it.
- What the business owned and owed on day one — Reports > Starting figures > Opening balances (cash in the bank, stock, money owed to and by you). If the business started trading on Adtro, press "Nothing to bring in — we started on Adtro" instead.
- Your business bank account — Bank > Import statement. Your first import creates the account.
Until the checklist is done, treat the balance sheet, tax and deadlines as provisional: the figures are right about the period and wrong about the business. A negative cash balance is almost always missing opening balances, not missing money.
Worth doing in the first week too:
- Money outgoing > Your suppliers — add your regular suppliers with the category their bills code to and their payment terms ("Due in 30 days"). Bills then arrive already coded and dated.
- Money incoming > Invoice details — your address and bank or PayNow details, printed on every invoice you raise.
The Owner / Accountant switch under the workspace list changes the words and shows Compliance; it is a view, never a permission. An accountant sees "Document Inbox", "Sales & Receivables", "Purchases & Payables" where an owner sees "Documents", "Money incoming", "Money outgoing".
FinBot is available from the Growth plan up.