Bookkeeping
Read your QuickBooks books inside Zyan — overview figures, transactions, balance sheet, accounts, pinned metrics and the AI budget planner.
FinanceBookkeeping mirrors your QuickBooks company into Zyan across five tabs: Overview, Transactions, Balance sheet, Accounts and Budget. Everything except Budget is read-only — Zyan reads your books and never writes to QuickBooks.
Figures do not live-update. They reload when you change tab or range, or when a sync finishes.
Before you start
You need the Bookkeeping plan feature and the Bookkeeping permission, and the workspace owner must have connected QuickBooks under SettingsIntegrationsQuickBooks. Only the owner can trigger a sync; members see a read-only "Managed by the workspace owner" line instead of the button.
Get your books in
Connect QuickBooks
The owner saves an Intuit Client ID and Client Secret on the QuickBooks tile and clicks Connect — see Connect QuickBooks and Stripe.
Sync
Back on FinanceBookkeeping, click Sync. The first sync is the slowest.
Pick a range
Use the 1M / 3M / 6M / 1Y / All pills in the header. The range drives every figure on Overview, Transactions, Balance sheet and Accounts.
Pin the numbers you check daily
BookkeepingOverviewPinned metrics — use the + on the card.
Reading the Overview tab
Overview carries revenue, expenses, profit and profit margin for the chosen window, a combined revenue and expense chart, monthly cards, an expense-category donut and a cash-flow chart.
The health chip beside the header tells you how old the data is.
| Chip | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Healthy | Synced within the last 12 hours |
| Stale | Synced within the last 24 hours |
| Overdue | Longer than that — run a sync |
| Error | The last attempt failed. The owner gets a Fix in settings link |
| Never synced | Connected, but no sync has completed yet |
| Paused | The integration switch is off; neither manual nor hourly syncs run |
A short history is not a bug
Balance snapshots build up sync by sync. If you pick 1Y a few weeks after connecting, you will see a partial-window banner reading "Balance snapshots build over time with each sync." Nothing is missing — that history did not exist in Zyan yet. Leave recurring auto-sync on and coverage grows.
Pinned metrics
Pins put one number at the top of Overview so you do not have to hunt for it.
Open the Pinned metrics card
It sits on the Overview tab. Click the + (Pin a metric).
Choose what to track
Pick a Pin type, a Metric, then the specific Select value.
Click Pin metric
| Setting | What it changes | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Pin type | Account, Sub type or Classification — what kind of thing the pin follows. | — |
| Metric | Window total (transactions), Change (snapshot window), or Balance (latest snapshot). | — |
| Select | Which account, sub type or classification the pin tracks. | — |
Remove a pin with the small × on its tile. Pins are managed by the workspace owner; members see "Pins are managed by the workspace owner".
Transactions
A searchable table of synced transactions — Date, Type, Category, Description, Amount — with CSV export. Clicking a row opens a read-only Transaction details dialog showing Category, Description, Transaction type and Reference.
| Setting | What it changes | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Search description, category, or txn type... | Free-text filter across description, category and transaction type. | — |
| Transaction scope | P&L only shows profit-and-loss line items; All accounts shows every account movement. | P&L only |
| All / Revenue / Expenses | Direction filter. | All |
| All classifications | Filters by QuickBooks classification — Revenue, Expense, Asset, Liability, Equity. | All classifications |
| 25 / 50 / 100 | Rows per page. | 25 |
| Export CSV | Downloads the currently filtered rows as a dated CSV file. | — |
An empty table reads "No transactions match your filters" — that is a filter result, not an error.
Balance sheet and Accounts
Balance sheet groups Asset, Liability and Equity accounts with balances and the change across the period. Accounts lists every chart-of-accounts row with its type, sub type and balance, sorted by largest movement.
| Setting | What it changes | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Search accounts… | Filters by name, description, type, sub type or classification. | — |
| All classifications | Classification filter for the account list. | All classifications |
| All sub types | Account sub-type filter. | All sub types |
| Show inactive accounts | Includes accounts QuickBooks marks inactive. | — |
Balances are "as of" the snapshot date in the header, not live.
The Budget tab
Budgets are the one part of Bookkeeping you write to. Build month-by-month income and expense plans in a grid, or draft them by chatting with an assistant that can read your actuals.
Budgets are owner-only
The Budget tab is gated to the workspace owner. QuickBooks is not required — without it you will see "QuickBooks is not connected — the assistant drafts without actuals and will ask you for figures instead."
Open the Budget tab
FinanceBookkeepingBudget, then New budget.
Set the shape
Choose Months and the Budget scope.
Fill it in
Type amounts straight into the grid, or open the assistant and ask something like "Draft this budget from my last 6 months of actuals."
Leave it
Edits save automatically after a short pause. There is no save button.
| Setting | What it changes | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Saved budgets | Switches between saved budgets. Reads “No budgets yet” when empty. | — |
| New budget | Creates another budget. | — |
| Rename | Opens “Rename budget” with a Save name action. | — |
| Delete | Removes the budget and its assistant conversation permanently. | — |
| Budget scope | Income & expenses, Income only, or Expenses only. | Income & expenses |
| Months | Length of the budget period. Minimum 1, maximum 24. | Minimum 1, maximum 24 |
| Category / Payment date | Each budget line has a category name, an optional payment date and a per-month amount. | — |
Shortening a budget deletes amounts
Reducing Months warns "Shortening the period removes the amounts in the trailing months." There is no undo. A budget is a plan only — nothing is charged or paid from it.
Grid cells go read-only while the assistant is writing, and you will see "Assistant is editing…". A budget holds a maximum of 80 lines. If two people edit the same budget at once, the later save refetches and shows a notice rather than overwriting the other person's work.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "Connect QuickBooks to enable Bookkeeping" | No connection exists, or a team member is viewing it — only the owner can connect | Owner opens Settings → Integrations → QuickBooks, saves the credentials, clicks Connect |
| "The last QuickBooks sync did not finish." | The last sync raised an error from Intuit — expired token, revoked app, or a transient fault | Owner clicks Fix in settings, then Test, and Reconnect if the token was rejected. Sync again |
| Status reads Paused and Sync is greyed out | The QuickBooks integration switch is off | Open the QuickBooks tile from the banner, turn the integration back on, then sync |
| Numbers only go back a few weeks on the 1Y range | Snapshots build up sync by sync; history before your first sync does not exist | Nothing to fix. Leave auto-sync on and coverage grows |
| A member sees "Bookkeeping access required" | Missing Bookkeeping permission key | Owner grants the Bookkeeping permission on the member's team profile |
| Figures look stale after you changed something in QuickBooks | Data reloads on tab, range or sync — it does not stream | Run Sync, or wait for the hourly auto-sync |
| The Budget tab is missing | Budgets are owner-gated | Nothing to change — ask the owner to build or edit the budget |