Frequently Asked Questions

Simple! Go to the sign-up page, complete the form and you're done! Included is a 30 day free trial. Just make sure you pay before the end of the 30 days to continue using your account.

It is easy to create more companies in LedgerPal and attach them to your email address. Just go back to the signup page on the main LedgerPal website and signup again using your same email address but a new company name and domain. Then when you next sign in you will be sent to a page that shows all your companies associated with that address.

Ledgerpal Basic allows one user. If you need more users accessing your accounts then Ledgerpal Pro is a better choice. Ledgerpal Pro allows 5 users and 5 more can be added for an addional cost of only $10 per month.
Ledgerpal Custom Gold starts at 2 users and we also offer pricing plans for 5, 10 or more users. Contact us details.

We backup all your data daily in three different secure areas and 2 continents. So even in the event of a national catastrophe we can be up an running again within hours. However some users have asked us to give them yet another backup of their data - one they can do themselves. In your account go to "Help > Backup Your Data" to download a detailed listing of your accounts in a common spreadsheet format. Any competent accountant or bookkeeper can recreate your books from this data.

Please send an email to our support staff with your domain name in the message. We will upgrade your account within 12 hours.

Do you access your banking over the web now? If so then you know how secure it can be. LedgerPal™ uses the same SSL 256-bit encryption security that banks do. And it is hosted in a private “cloud” and in the same ultra secure data centers that many of North Americas biggest banks and financial institutions are hosted in. However, there is one big difference — with your banking you can actually transfer money in and out of accounts, but with LedgerPal™ you are only doing accounting record keeping...it doesn't have the ability to move your money. This makes it even safer than online banking. LedgerPal™ gives you more security than you would have keeping your data on your own computers. Just imagine if you had a break-in or fire or flood. With LedgerPal™ your data remains safe and accessible.

LedgerPal is a powerful program and allows you to make entries direct to the general ledger – the heart of the accounting system. Go to General Ledger > Create an Entry. If you don’t know your debits and credits you better quickly get out of here and let your bookkeeper or accountant make these entries. Otherwise this screen should be easy to figure out. If you are making an entry to A/P or A/R make sure you select “name” to select the proper vendor or customer to link the transaction to.

No! And it is "no" for a good reason. Automatic loads often take more time and effort to sort out properly than a manual entry. Here is an example. You live in Ontario and go to lunch with a client. Under local tax rules you can claim only 1/2 of the cost of the lunch plus 1/2 of the HST tax. This is easy to calculate from the manual receipt. In an automatic download you would get one number. Let's say it is $33. How much of that was the lunch? How much tip? How much tax? It will take you more time backtracking and breaking all this out than a manual entry (which takes about 10 seconds). Automatic dumps are fine for tracking your personal expenses but cause serious complications in business accounting. They also give the false impression that a receipt is not needed. Your first audit from the tax department will dispel that notion!

Note: This is only available in Pro or Gold Custom accounts. Periodically you will want to do a physical count of your inventory. When you do so you may find that the number on the books is different from the number in your warehouse or shop floor. In this case you need to adjust the inventory on the books. To do this go to Vendors > Adjust Inventory. Then choose a date to adjust and the items to adjust. It will auto-fill with the booked quantity. Enter the actual quantity. If the cost looks wrong you can change that also. Choose the account to adjust the change to. It is usually the account “Inventory short/over” - unless you have set up something else you prefer. Click save and the adjustment will be done.

LedgerPal is set up so you only pay for what you use. You can stop your monthly subscription at any time and then resume it again later without losing your data. Your payments are always completely under your control and you can start and stop them through the Paypal account that you created at signup. Login to your PayPal account at www.paypal.com. Then go to My Account, then Profile and My Pre-approved Payments page. On that page you can cancel the monthly payment to LedgerPal. Once you do and the renewal date passes, you will be locked out of your LedgerPal account until you resume payments again.

Yes! LedgerPal Pro and Gold Custom offer Bank and Credit Card reconciliations.

(Note: This is only available in Pro or Gold Custom accounts.) There are two types of inventory you might handle. We call them inventory items and non-inventory items. Inventory items are stored in an asset account until you sell them. (Actually you can choose what account it goes into in the item setup but we recommend it to be a “current asset” type.) Then, when the item is sold, the value is moved automatically to an expense called “cost of goods sold”.

Non-inventory items are not held as an asset but are expensed right away. You might use this for items that are drop shipped from another company direct to your customers or if you are brokering an item direct from the factory to your customer, etc.

So for each item you handle (remember services are not ever included in inventory) you need to set up the item and choose whether it is an inventory item or non-inventory item. Once the item is set up properly then you sell the item by choosing it on your invoice form and you buy more of the items by purchasing it through the purchase inventory form.

However before you sell an item you need to buy it. And to record the purchase of it go to Vendors > Enter Bill. Select vendor and the payment account that will record this. (For instance if it is A/P then choose dropdown Accounts Payable – unless you have a better idea. And if it is a cash purchase choose the bank, etc.) Fill in the rest of the form making sure you choose the right item for each vendor.

That is easy! Simply go to your account and at the top of the only page you can access you will see a yellow button to click to re-subscribe and set up your monthly payment again.

Your expenses are all the things you pay for that are not inventory or long-term assets (like buildings, cars or airplanes). If you are buying a long-term asset you enter that through the General Ledger by debiting the asset account (you may need to make a new one if the right account isn't already in the chart of accounts) and crediting however you paid for it (cash, loan, bag of chickens, etc.).

To record your normal expenses go to Vendors > Record an Expense and fill in the top part of the form. (Only put in a currency rate if you want to override the defaults already in the currency setup page.) Choose the account you want to charge this expense to. So for instance if you just bought paper for your printer put it to office supplies. Then either enter a total before tax in the line subtotal field, or enter the total and let LedgerPal™ calculate what the subtotal is for you. Make sure you choose the right tax code in the dropdown so it can calculate the subtotal properly. You can charge this expense to a job and a department if you want.

Tip: if you use many different gas stations or restaurants, for instance, you can set up a vendor called Misc. Gas Stn or Misc. Restaurant, to save the time of entering new vendors. You only need to track expenses to a particular Vendor if you want to see a report on it, or if you have an accounts payable set up with them.

The best way to track any value added tax (like HST in Canada) is to rename two tax accounts (do this in Setup Taxes). Call one "HST on sales" and the other "HST on purchases". Then in the Setup Tax Codes make new tax codes called "Hst on sales" and the other "Hst on purchases" (or you could abbreviate them to HS and HP if you want) and point them to the respective tax accounts that you already setup. On the same screen also set the defaults for which accounts to use for sales and which for purchases and expenses. That's it!

Then when you record an invoice the default tax will be HST on sales and on your bills and expenses it will be HST on purchases.

So now at the end of your reporting period (yearly or monthly or whatever you are set up for) just look at the total in each tax account as of the reporting date and remit or claim the difference.

As an example if you ended the year with $2500 in the HST on sales account and $2000 in the HST on purchases account then you would remit ($2500-$2000) = $500 to the tax authority.

Your adjusting ledger entry to clear the accounts and record the payment would be:

Debit HST on Sales $2500
Credit HST on Purchases $2000
Credit Cash in Bank $500

Before you can use your company account you need to enter your company information and your user preferences.

Vendor payments and customer payments cannot be edited after they are recorded. You may, however, view it or delete it and do it over again, and record something else instead.

Simple. Just go to SETUP, CUSTOMERS AND CLIENTS, and click on the link that says IMPORT CUSTOMERS FROM QUICKBOOKS. A box will appear and at the bottom of the box there is a link to remove the last group of customers that you imported.

You may cancel your recurring billing at any time.

Privacy Policy

Your privacy is important to us.

This is a quick explanation of what is private on this site. We like you to know what kind of information is collected when you are visiting this web site.

This website is hosted in one of North America's largest and most secure data centers. For security purposes, the data is replicated and backed up in Europe. Many security safeguards are in place to protect your privacy. Your password and identifier data is encrypted so it cannot be read by anyone other than yourself.

Any payments are handled through a secure 3rd party. We do not ever have access to or store your credit card, bank or other payment information.

We do not rent or disclose your identity, email or mailing address to any other entity.

When you visit this website, standard data is collected like the IP address that your ISP has given to you to use as well as the time that you accessed this website. This is a common and normal practice which helps us provide a safe and secure site for all users.

If you link to other websites from this website, we are not responsible for the privacy policies of those other sites.

This privacy policy may be altered at any time.