Finance in Zyan: what each surface is for

Bookkeeping, Payroll, My Pay and the Billing Catalog do four different jobs. This page draws the boundary so you open the right one first.

The Finance group in the sidebar holds five entries — My Pay, Payroll, Ad Revenue, Bookkeeping and Billing Catalog — and the boundary between them is not obvious from the names. One mirrors your accounting software, one records what you owe your team, one holds what you charge your clients, and one is each team member's own view of their pay.

Nothing in Finance moves money. Zyan reads your books, records your payroll and drives your Stripe account. It never initiates a payment on your behalf.

Before you start

Each surface is gated twice: by a plan feature sold with your Zyan plan (bookkeeping, payroll, client_billing, and adsterra for Ad Revenue), and by a permission granted on a team member's profile (Bookkeeping, Payroll, Commissions, Billing). Without the plan feature the nav entry disappears. Without the permission the page refuses to open, even if you can see the link.

Billing Catalog

The plan you sell, priced and synced to Stripe

Stripe

Charges the client on your own connected account

Your bank

Stripe settles on its own schedule

QuickBooks

Picks the deposit up on its own schedule

Bookkeeping

Zyan reads it back, read-only

Money leaves Zyan at step two and comes back as history at step five. That gap is why the page that decides what a client pays and the page that reports what you earned are two different pages.

The five surfaces

Surface	What it is for	Who opens it
Bookkeeping	A read-only mirror of your QuickBooks books — revenue, expenses, profit, transactions, balance sheet, accounts and budgets	Owner and members with the Bookkeeping permission. Only the owner can sync
Payroll	What you owe your own team for a pay period: draft statements, approvals, and payments you record after paying them	Owner and members with the Payroll permission
My Pay	A team member's own statements and pay status	Every member with the Commissions permission. Owners are redirected to Payroll
Billing Catalog	The plans you sell, the clients billed on your Stripe account, and your shared terms	Owner and members with the Billing permission
Ad Revenue	Adsterra publisher earnings	Owner only

Bookkeeping is not Billing Catalog

These two are the pair people confuse, because both show money.

Bookkeeping is money that has already happened, as your accountant sees it. It comes from QuickBooks, it is read-only, and it covers the whole agency — your own rent and software subscriptions as much as your client revenue.

Billing Catalog is money you are going to charge. It holds the services you sell, the price and interval of each, and the client portals subscribed to them on Stripe. Changing a plan here changes what a client pays.

Nothing you do in Billing Catalog shows up in Bookkeeping directly. The charges land in Stripe, Stripe settles into your bank, and QuickBooks picks the deposits up on its own schedule.

Payroll is not My Pay

Same records, two audiences. Payroll is the owner's workspace: the whole roster, every statement, approvals and the archive. My Pay is what one team member sees of their own numbers, and nothing else.

Both are reporting surfaces. A statement moves Draft → Approved → Paid, and "Paid" means you told Zyan you paid it.

Zyan never moves money

There is no pay button anywhere in Payroll. Record manual payment stores a method, a date and a reference for a payment you already made by cash, check, ACH, wire or an external payroll provider. QuickBooks is read-only in both directions of intent — Zyan reads your books and never writes to them.

What to set up first

Connect QuickBooks

Bookkeeping is empty until the workspace owner connects an Intuit app under SettingsIntegrationsQuickBooks. See Connect QuickBooks and Stripe.

Connect Stripe

SettingsIntegrationsStripe — the Billing Catalog's Customers tab, the Bill this client wizard and the storefront all depend on a connected Stripe account.

Build your catalog

FinanceBilling CatalogCatalog. Create the plans you sell before you try to bill anyone — Billing Catalog.

Set pay settings for your team

FinancePayrollthe memberPay settings. Base pay, pay type and commission percentages live there, and a member with none produces a statement of zero. Do this before the first run — see Payroll.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
A Finance nav entry is missing entirely	The plan feature is not on your Zyan plan	Ask Zyan to add the feature; a permission alone will not reveal it
A team member sees "Bookkeeping access required"	They lack the Bookkeeping permission key	The owner grants the Bookkeeping permission on the member's team profile
A member sees "You do not have permission to view payroll."	They lack the Payroll permission	The owner grants it, or points them at My Pay for their own numbers
Opening My Pay as the owner lands on Payroll	Owners are redirected by design	Use Payroll; a member's own view is under their payroll detail
Bookkeeping shows "Connect QuickBooks to enable Bookkeeping"	No QuickBooks connection exists, or a member is viewing it	Only the owner can connect — Settings → Integrations → QuickBooks

In this section

Bookkeeping

The QuickBooks mirror — overview, transactions, balance sheet, accounts and the budget planner.

Billing Catalog

The plans you sell, service families, Stripe drift, and every client on billing.

Invoices and billing a client

The Bill this client wizard, payment attempts, refunds and consolidating subscriptions.

Payroll

Semi-monthly statements, approvals, recorded payments and the archive.

My Pay — what your team sees

The self-service pay view each team member gets, and why it sometimes is not there.

Connect QuickBooks and Stripe

Your own Intuit app, the Stripe connected account, and what breaks when a token expires.