Brightbook Frequently Asked Questions

Clients, Invoices & Payments

  • How can I delete a Client? If you click into the Client Profile page for the one you want to delete - then you should see a Delete button at the bottom-left (if not, you'll first need to delete all their invoices and payments, and then you'll see one).
  • What is the different between 'Your Contact' and 'Accounts Contact'? Your Contact is the person you deal with the most - if you add an Accounts Contact, they will be pre-filled when you email invoices & statements.
  • Can I add a sales receipt without creating a invoice and then adding a payment? You'd need to create an Invoice for all Payments received - without this, Payments won't be included within the reports (as only Payments reconciled against Invoices are used).
  • How can I get my Clients to pay by Paypal? If you go into your Clients Profile page and add their email address at the bottom & click the Email button, they will then be able to login to their account & pay you directly through Paypal.
  • Is it possible to have stock items and stock control within my Brightbook? We have a Products & Services system for this, which allows you to preload what you sell.. however, we are not yet able to manage stock levels (this is coming in our next release)
  • I've loaned my company money to start it up, how do I log this? By default, Brightbook sees all payments in as Client Payments, so when you pay money into your business, we recommend you set up a new Bill Type called Directors Loan (under Account Settings > Bill Types), you'd need to add this in as a negatively valued Bill (e.g. -1000.00) using the Directors Loan Bill Type. In this way it will show up on the P&L clearly.

Suppliers & Bills

  • What is the proper way to put in an foreign currency expense? All Bills are treated in your home currency. If your home currency is in GBP, you'd need to convert all non-GBP transactions into GBP before import - but if your bank account payment the money is GBP, then the conversion will be done automatically for you, by your bank.
  • Can I set up recurring Bills? It's best if you use the Bank Import feature for recurring Bills - i.e. something you pay regularly every month - we've mostly found that recurring bills don't always appear the same day every month, and therefore require more work to process.

Reports

  • Do you have a facility to enter opening balances? We recommend you either import all past invoices & payments - or you can just add single invoices for each Client with the amount they currently have outstanding. For your bank balance, just go into Banking and update your balance and set the correct date.
  • Do you have a Trial Balance and/or Balance Sheet? At present, we've not got a Trial Balance or Journal entries - you would have to rely upon the P&L and Tax Report.. However, we are developing this side of Brightbook and these will be in our next major release. Brightbook is more of a day-to-day accounting system for business owners with little or no accounting training - making Invoices, tracking Client Payments and logging Bills is the priority for us.
  • Is it possible to export reports from this system, e.g. to Excel? Yes - you can do this, all you need to do is select the contents of the report on screen and copy & paste into Excel or a Google Doc Sheet
  • I need a summary of Profit and Loss / Expenditure for specific dates, how can I get this? If you go into the P&L > Tax Report (top-right button) then you can enter any specific dates you require

Subscription Features

  • How come it's free - surely there is a catch? We currently have 2 subscription features - which are completely optional - both simply remove all mentions of Brightbook from the emails and PDF's you send out. They are priced at £1.99 and £3.49 per month.
  • My card details have expired and my card was declined. How can I update the details? If you go into Get Features and re-add your feature, then proceed into the checkout and then you can enter your new card details. If you still have the subscription active - you just have to wait until it expires and then you can follow the same process.

Last updated: 22 May 2017