IQ Books: the software behind your books

Good bookkeeping used to mean a lot of typing: copying bank lines into a ledger, matching payments to invoices and keying in receipts one at a time. IQ Books takes over much of that work, so more of our time goes on checking your figures and answering your questions, and less on data entry.

It is made by ReconcileIQ, a UK software company, for UK businesses and the bookkeepers and accountants who work with them. The UK VAT treatments are built in, and every entry is double-entry, so the books always balance.

What IQ Books does with your records

• Bank feeds. Transactions arrive from your bank and are coded to a suggested account, so they do not have to be typed in.
• Receipts and bills. A receipt can be scanned into a draft bill rather than entered by hand.
• Invoices. Payments are matched to the invoices they settle, so you can see what is still owed.
• VAT. Each transaction carries its VAT treatment, so the figures for a VAT return come straight from the books.

The software suggests; a person decides. Nothing is posted to your books until it has been confirmed, and each suggestion shows how it was reached and how confident the software is. We review those suggestions as part of keeping your books up to date each month, and anything we cannot place goes on a short list of questions for you.

What you can see

You get your own login and live access, so you can check your bank balance, your profit so far or who owes you money whenever you like, without waiting for us to send a report.

• Nothing is quietly changed. A correction is made by reversing the original entry and posting a new one, and both stay visible, so you can always see what changed and when.
• Closed periods stay closed. Once a period is locked, entries in it cannot be edited, so figures that have already been filed do not move by accident.
• Your records are yours. The general ledger, trial balance and reports can be exported at any time, free of charge, so you are never tied to the software.

Already using Xero, QuickBooks or Sage?

You do not have to switch. We are happy to keep your books in the software you already use, with the same live access for you. IQ Books is there if you are starting fresh, working from spreadsheets or paper, or want a simpler set-up.

If you are changing accountant at the same time, our guide to switching accountants explains how the handover works and how your opening balances are carried across.

The rest of the ReconcileIQ suite

IQ Books is one of five products in ReconcileIQ, all made by the same company. The other four work alongside IQ Books or with other accounting software:

Inside IQ Books, the products share one set of books. CodeIQ's coding runs inside the ledger, and year-end adjustments prepared in PrepIQ can be posted straight back into it. You do not need any of the other products to work with us. They are listed here so you know what the software around your books does.

Questions people ask