Billkeep
You never type a debit. The books still balance.
Behind the invoice screen Billkeep keeps a real set of double-entry books. Every document you finish, every payment you take, every bill you enter posts itself to a journal, and six financial statements are read straight back out of it. You are never shown any of that — the app opens in Simple mode and stays there — until the day somebody asks you for a profit and loss. Then one switch, and there one is, covering every invoice you have ever written.
Bookkeeping is a by-product, not a chore
Most accounting software starts at the chart of accounts and asks you to work forwards. Billkeep starts where you actually start — a job done, an invoice sent — and works backwards to the books for you.
- Finishing an invoice debits what you are owed and credits sales, with the tax split off to its own account.
- Recording a payment moves it out of what you are owed and into the account it landed in.
- Entering a bill credits what you owe suppliers and debits whatever it was for.
- A receipt, a transfer, a bank charge — all of them post themselves the same way.
None of it needs setting up. The chart of accounts is created with your first business, the postings start with your first document, and anything you had before the books existed is brought in the next time you open the app. The one switch there is — Pro mode, further down — decides whether you are shown the books, never whether they are kept.
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Money owed to you | 1,650.00 | |
| Sales | 1,500.00 | |
| Tax you owe | 150.00 |
What Billkeep wrote when you pressed Finish invoice. You can look at it on the journal screen. You never have to.
Six reports, read out of the journal itself
Not a separate summary that drifts away from your invoices — the same entries, added up different ways. A figure on a report can always be traced back to the document that put it there.
Profit and loss
What you earned, what it cost, and what is left. The one an accountant asks for first, and the one a lender asks for second.
Balance sheet
What you own, what you owe and the difference, as at any date. This year's profit is shown apart from the years before it, split at the month your financial year starts.
Cash movement
What actually came into and went out of each account over a period, and what it was for. Money in the bank, not money on paper.
Trial balance
Every account with its two columns, and the proof that they match. If they ever did not, that would be a bug — so it is on the page.
What is owed
Both sides at once: who owes you and who you owe, banded by how late each one is. Thirty days, sixty, ninety, worse.
Tax position
Tax you charged customers against tax you paid suppliers, and the difference to hand over — or to claim back, which it will say plainly when the figure goes the other way.
Plain first, formal beside it
Everywhere else Billkeep refuses accounting words — You're owed, not Accounts receivable. These screens cannot follow that rule all the way, because a report headed What you earned less what you spent is one nobody can file. So both are on the page: every account is named in plain words, every section carries its proper title, and the two are shown together. Nothing is hidden from somebody who knows the formal term, and nobody who does not is left guessing.
| Code | What Billkeep calls it | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 1000 | Business bank account | Bank |
| 1100 | Money owed to you | Accounts receivable |
| 2100 | Money you owe suppliers | Accounts payable |
| 4000 | Sales | Income |
| 5000 | General expenses | Expense |
Rename any of them to suit how you talk about your business. The ones Billkeep posts to itself can be renamed but not removed — deleting the account the app is about to use is not a state anything recovers from.
A starting chart, not a blank page
A new set of books arrives with the accounts a small business actually uses, grouped into the five classes every balance sheet is built from.
- Add your own accounts whenever the standard ones are too coarse.
- Archive one you have stopped using — its history stays where it is.
- Each account shows its balance as at today, and opens into every entry that made it.
- Saved items can be pointed at a specific income account, so a product line reports separately without any extra work per invoice.
Nothing is edited. Nothing is deleted.
A wrong entry is reversed and both stay on the page. That is what makes a set of books worth filing from — and it is the same rule the invoice numbering follows, for the same reason.
Every posting, numbered
Each entry carries its own number, the date it belongs to, what produced it, and the accounts it touched. Open one and both sides are there in full.
Write your own
For the things no document covers — depreciation, an adjustment your accountant asked for, money you put into the business yourself. Debits and credits have to match before it will post.
Reverse, don't rewrite
A reversal posts the mirror image, dated when the correction happened. The original is still there, the correction is beside it, and the trail explains itself.
Bills, suppliers and purchase orders
Invoicing is only half of a business. What you owe is tracked with the same care as what you are owed, and both appear on the same ageing report.
- Bills — dated, due-dated, approved, part-paid or paid, and late when they are late.
- Suppliers — who you buy from, their terms, and what is outstanding with each.
- Purchase orders — what you have ordered, what has arrived, and one button to turn it into the bill when it lands.
- Where it lands — a bill line can go to an expense, to stock, or to equipment you now own, because a van is not an expense.
Tax on purchases is tracked too
Tax you paid a supplier goes to its own account and comes off the tax you owe, so the tax position report is the net figure rather than half the story.
A bill is frozen when you approve it
Same rule as an invoice: approving copies the supplier's details and the rates onto the bill, so changing a rate next year does not rewrite last year's purchase ledger.
Squaring off a statement
Open your statement, tick everything on it, and Billkeep compares what has cleared against the closing balance you typed in. What is left unticked is what the bank has not seen yet — which is normal, and why the comparison is against cleared items rather than your whole balance.
Movements that belong to no document
Money in, money out, a transfer between two of your own accounts, a bank charge. Each one is categorised to an account and posts itself like everything else. A transfer can never be miscoded as income.
Every pot of money, in one place
Bank accounts, cash in hand, a card, money received but not yet banked. Each shows what is in it, what has cleared, and when it was last squared off against a statement.
- An opening balance for an account that existed before Billkeep did.
- Every movement traces back to the invoice, bill or entry behind it.
- Nothing connects to your bank. There is no open-banking feed here, and no third party is ever handed your login.
Invoice in theirs, report in yours
A document keeps the currency it was written in. The books keep both that figure and its value in your own currency, converted at the rate that applied on the day.
Rates you control
You enter the rate and the date it applies from. Nothing is fetched from a rate service, so nothing changes under a report you have already filed.
Frozen onto the document
The rate used is written onto the invoice when you finish it. A later rate change does not move last quarter's revenue.
The difference has an account
When a foreign invoice is paid at a different rate than it was raised at, the gap posts to an exchange difference account instead of quietly unbalancing the books.
None of this is on your screen until you ask for it
Billkeep opens in Simple mode. The books are being kept — every posting on this page is being made — but the sidebar shows only what running the business needs. One switch reveals the rest.
- Simple — invoices, money out, clients, totals, bills, suppliers.
- Pro — adds the six reports, the chart of accounts, the journal, bank and cash, purchase orders and exchange rates.
Settings → How much of it you see. It changes what is in the sidebar and nothing else — nothing is deleted, no record is hidden, and no figure changes.
Switching to Pro reveals; it does not start
Because the postings are made in both modes, the day you turn Pro on you get a profit and loss covering every invoice you have ever written — not one that begins today. There is no gap where Simple mode was on, and nothing to backfill.
It goes the other way too. Turning Pro back off hides the screens and keeps the books.
The limits, said out loud
A set of books is exactly the kind of thing it is tempting to oversell. Here is what this is not.
- Not a filing service. Billkeep produces the statements. It does not submit anything to a tax authority anywhere, and it never will without saying so first.
- Not a substitute for an accountant. It is a very good way to arrive at one prepared, which is not the same thing.
- Not connected to your bank. No feeds, no screen-scraping, no handing your login to a third party. You tick your own statement.
- Not a multi-user ledger. One person's books, on their devices. There is no accountant login and no approval workflow.
In the browser first
The books, the purchase ledger and the bank screens are in the browser version today. The Android app shares the same records and the same cloud copy, and shows the invoices, expenses and totals it always has — it does not yet show the journal or the financial statements.
Nothing is lost by using both: the postings are derived from your documents, so a business run from the phone all week has a full set of books waiting the moment it opens in a browser.
Write one invoice and look at the journal
It takes about a minute, and it is a far better answer than this page about whether the books do what you need.
Open BillkeepFree to start. Your records stay in your browser and go to your account as soon as you sign in on both.