Bookkeeping
Software shaped like your business. Books an accountant can sign.
Financial Operations
“Every accounting package makes you fit your trade into its forms. You type "Sales Invoice" when you mean an admission, "Party" when you mean a student, and the words on the screen stop matching the words in your head — so the books drift away from the business. CostTrail builds the screens around how you already work. Describe what you do in a sentence, or hand over the spreadsheet you already run on, and you get software in your own vocabulary, with proper double-entry books underneath, written for you as you go.”
Describe your trade in a sentence and it builds your screens, in your words. You never type a debit or a credit: proper double-entry accounts are written underneath as you work, so the statements an accountant and a tax office expect are always there and always agree.
1. Design it
Describe your business, or hand over the spreadsheet you already run it on. Check the draft it shows you. Press Yes, build this, and your sidebar becomes your screens.
2. Fill it
Type an entry, photograph a bill and let it be read for you, or import records you already keep. All three land on the same screen and write the same books.
3. Read it
Trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet, ledger and aging — written from those same entries, and ask about any of it in plain language under your own labels.
Who uses it?
Real people with real problems this solves.
Coaching institute owner
Before: Enquiries, admissions and instalments live in a register and three WhatsApp threads. Accounting software has no word for an admission, so nothing matches
With CostTrail: Screens called Enquiries, Admissions and Fee Receipts, with a running balance per student. "Who still owes me" is one figure on the dashboard, and the books underneath are proper double-entry
Anyone already on a spreadsheet
Before: The business runs on a workbook with twelve monthly tabs and formulas nobody dares touch. Moving to real software means rebuilding it by hand
With CostTrail: Hand over the file. The tabs become screens, the monthly sheets become one filterable register, and the formulas carry over — with anything untranslatable named rather than quietly dropped
Trader / wholesaler
Before: Buy by the case, sell by the case, and no idea what is on the shelf until somebody counts it. Receivables live in a diary
With CostTrail: Stock moves as entries are saved, so what is on the shelf and what is running low are always current — and every buyer's balance updates itself
Transport operator
Before: Freight per trip, diesel and tolls and driver batta per trip, and no way to see which lorry actually made money
With CostTrail: A Trips screen in their own words, with what each lorry made worked out per row and per vehicle
Chartered accountant
Before: Each client sends a folder of scanned bills; data entry eats the chargeable hours, and every client's business is shaped differently
With CostTrail: Bulk-upload the folder, review what was read, post in one batch — onto screens shaped like that client's trade rather than a generic voucher form
Freelancer / household
Before: Income from a dozen invoices, spending across three wallet apps, no single picture and a growing CA bill
With CostTrail: A set of books per business — the job, the side business, the household — kept apart. Upload the statements, ask in plain language, hand a monthly summary to the CA
How to connect
Describe your business, or upload the spreadsheet you already run it on — nothing to integrate
- 1Say where you are. One screen, one click — forty-seven countries, each setting its own currency, financial year, date format and the tax accounts that country expects, before anything is recorded
- 2Design it. Describe your business in your own words, hand over the spreadsheet you already run on, or open a finished sample and look around first. It asks the questions a good bookkeeper would, shows you the draft, and builds nothing until you say yes
- 3Fill it. Type an entry on your own screen, photograph a bill and let AI read it onto that screen, or import records you already keep. All three land in the same place and write the same books
- 4Read it. Your own dashboard, plus eight statutory reports that are always there and always agree. Ask AI Chat anything in plain language — under your labels, not ours
- 5Check it. Upload a bank or wallet statement and it tells you what your books already have right and what the bank knows that you never recorded — rather than typing it all in again and counting it twice
What it replaces
Every feature exists because something was broken before.
Software built from a conversation
Every accounting package forces your trade into its vocabulary. You learn its words instead of it learning yours
Describe your business and it designs the screens — lists, registers, formulas, dashboard figures and the accounting rules underneath. It asks what a bookkeeper would: a merchant selling building materials is asked "when you sell cement you bought at three different prices, which cost do I use to work out your margin — the oldest batch, the newest, or an average?" Review the draft in plain language, change anything by saying so, and publish when you are happy
Statement reconciliation
Uploading a bank statement after you have already entered the week means recording the same money twice — and the books still balance, so nothing warns you
A statement checks your books instead of being typed into them: what it confirms, and what the bank knows that you never recorded — the charge, the standing order, the customer who paid without saying. Bank and wallet statements alike, worldwide
Your spreadsheet, converted
The business already runs on a workbook. Moving means rebuilding it by hand or paying somebody to
Upload the file. It reads the tabs, columns, sample rows and formulas — twelve monthly sheets become one register you filter, a summary tab becomes dashboard figures, and any formula it cannot carry over is named rather than quietly dropped
Books written for you
Double-entry means learning debits and credits, or paying somebody who has
Each screen carries its own posting rules, so saving an entry writes the journal entries. Before anything is built, the draft states the judgement it has made against each screen — "counted as income the day you record it; right if the work is done by then, so say so if this is money taken in advance, because that is money you owe until you have earned it." Debits must equal credits before anything is stored: an entry that cannot balance is refused rather than saved wrong
AI document extraction
Reading invoices, receipts and statements by eye and retyping them
Upload a PDF, image, Excel or CSV. It is read for you and filed onto your screen, with the supplier matched against your own list rather than guessed — not into a generic voucher you then have to translate
Statutory reports, built from your own screens
Every accounting package has a Trial Balance. What none of them has is one built from a screen called Admissions, or Trips, or Deliveries — you get the statements only by first translating your trade into theirs
Eight always there and always agreeing: Trial Balance, Profit & Loss, Category Breakdown, Balance Sheet, Ledger, Day Book, Outstanding, Aging — plus Stock Summary and Low Stock when your business holds goods. Every figure comes from entries typed in your own words. Filter by date, search, sort, export to CSV or PDF. Click any figure to open the entries behind it
Stock that keeps itself
Knowing what is on the shelf means counting it, or keeping a second sheet that never matches
If your screens move goods, stock moves with them — typed, photographed or imported. What is on the shelf, what it is worth, and what is at or below your reorder level. It appears only if your business holds stock
Invoices from your own screens
Handing a customer a bill means leaving your books for a separate tool
Print an invoice from any row that records a sale, with your logo, your numbering and your country's tax formatting
More than one business
A salary, a side business and a household are three sets of books. Most tools make you buy three accounts or muddle them into one
Add a business and switch between them from the top bar. Each keeps its own screens, ledger, reports, currency and financial year. Nothing crosses between them
AI Chat across your books
Custom questions mean building a report or asking the accountant
Ask in plain English and get an answer with the rows behind it — in your own vocabulary. A tracker that says "bhada" gets answers about bhada
Excel import + templates
Bringing legacy data across means re-keying it
Download a blank sheet shaped like your screens, paste your rows, upload it back
Audit log + invoice branding
Audit prep means reconstructing who changed what; invoices need to look like yours
Every change is logged. Invoice Settings carry your logo, address, tax registration, bank details and numbering
Questions you can ask right now
Plain English, answered from your own data.
Industries using it
Same tool, different industries.
Education
An admission is not a sales invoice and a student is not a party. Instalments, batches and dropouts have no home in a voucher form.
“Who still owes me, and since when?”
Wholesale & distribution
Goods bought by the case and sold by the case, with buyers who pay later and stock nobody has time to count.
“What is on the shelf and what is it worth?”
Logistics & transport
Profit is per trip and per vehicle, and the costs — fuel, tolls, driver allowance — are paid in cash on the road.
“What did each vehicle make me this month?”
Healthcare
Treatments at different charges, part payment now and the rest later, and staff paid monthly. None of it fits an invoice-and-payment model.
“Which treatments brought in the most this quarter?”
Professional services
Project revenue and per-client billing make "which engagement is profitable" a constant question. Standard reports answer it in days, not seconds.
“Show profit per client for the last six months.”
Retail
Daily takings and supplier bills stack up. Knowing which products actually make money needs SKU-level reconciliation across files.
“Which categories have the best margin this quarter?”