Bank feed
Northwind Studio · current account
- 12 Apr STRIPE PAYOUT 4471 £2,400.00 Northwind
- 14 Apr FASTER PAYMENT REF NH-88 £1,850.00 Northwind
- 19 Apr PAYPAL *GLASSHOUSE £620.00 Glasshouse
- 21 Apr WISE TRANSFER 88213 £430.00 Needs a client
Bookkeeping for freelance designers
Messy bank feed in.
Tax-ready invoices out.
Ledgerline reads the transactions in your business account, matches them to the clients and projects you actually worked on, and drafts the invoices your accountant keeps asking for. No spreadsheets. No shoebox of receipts.
No card required · Read-only bank access · Cancel in one click
Draft invoice · INV-2026-0148
Northwind Coffee Co.
- Brand identity system£1,200.00
- Packaging artwork — 6 SKUs£650.00
- Subtotal
- £1,850.00
- VAT at 20%
- £370.00
- Total due
- £2,220.00
Built from 2 matched payments · nothing typed by hand
Reads your money from wherever it lands, and hands it to whoever does your books.
- Stripe
- Wise
- PayPal
- Monzo Business
- Starling
- Revolut
- Mercury
- Xero
- QuickBooks
- FreeAgent
The part nobody trained you for
You didn’t become a designer to do bookkeeping.
But every April it is the same archaeology: six months of statement PDFs, a camera roll of crumpled receipts, and an accountant asking a question you cannot answer without opening four tabs.
“Which payout was that?”
Stripe transfers arrive as a number and a date. By the time you need to bill, the project name is gone and the reference means nothing to anyone.
“Did I already invoice this?”
Deposits, retainers and part payments land weeks apart. Half the job is working out what has been paid and what is still owed.
“Where does this one go?”
Software, fonts, a client lunch, a flight to a shoot. Without a category on the transaction, VAT returns and 1099 season turn into guesswork.
How it works
Three steps, then it mostly runs itself.
Ledgerline is deliberately boring software. It does the reconciliation you keep putting off, in the background, and shows you only what needs a decision.
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Connect the account
Link your business current account through read-only open banking, or import a CSV from Stripe, Wise or PayPal. Ledgerline can see money move. It can never move it.
Takes about ninety seconds.
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Reconcile in one pass
Every incoming payment is matched against your clients and projects, with the confidence shown in plain language. Anything ambiguous waits in a queue with a suggestion beside it, never silently guessed at.
One review screen. Keyboard only.
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Send and export
Signed-off transactions become dated, sequential invoices with the right tax lines for your country. Export the quarter to Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent, or hand your accountant a single clean bundle.
Numbering stays sequential and audit-friendly.
3.2m
transactions reconciled for freelancers in the last year
4 min 20 s
median time to clear a full month of unmatched payments
31
countries whose tax lines we generate out of the box
What’s inside
Built for work that gets paid late, in odd amounts.
Freelance income is not a salary. It arrives in deposits, in three currencies, sometimes six weeks after you sent the work. Everything here assumes that.
Client matching that learns names
It reads the reference, the amount, the sender and the date, then learns your shorthand. Rename “SQ*GLSHS” to Glasshouse Type once and it stays renamed.
Invoices drafted from the transaction
No blank template. Line items, dates and tax treatment come from what actually landed in the account, so the invoice matches the bank by construction.
Tax lines by jurisdiction
UK VAT at 20%, EU reverse charge, US sales tax, Australian GST, Canadian HST. Set your status once and the correct wording appears on every document.
Receipts in, by email or photo
Forward a receipt to your private Ledgerline address, or snap it in the app. We read the merchant, date and total, then file it against the right transaction.
Multi-currency at the real rate
Get paid in dollars, invoice in pounds. We lock the exchange rate from the date the money landed, not the date you got round to invoicing it.
An accountant pack, one click
A dated bundle: reconciled ledger, numbered invoices, matched receipts, and a summary of anything you flagged as personal or still unexplained.
The reconciliation screen
It shows you its working. Every time.
Most tools either guess silently or make you do the matching by hand. Ledgerline does neither: every suggestion carries a reason you can check in two seconds.
- Confidence in words, not percentages. “Exact amount, known sender” tells you more than “92% match”.
- Splits and part payments. One deposit against two projects, or a retainer settled across three months.
- Bulk rules. Turn a one-off fix into a permanent rule for that sender, amount or reference pattern.
- Nothing is final until you say so. Drafts stay drafts, and you can undo any match, forever.
- A personal flag that keeps non-business spending out of your tax figures.
Before and after
The same quarter, two very different evenings.
| Doing it yourself | With Ledgerline |
|---|---|
| Export six months of statements into a spreadsheet you will abandon | The feed syncs every morning, read-only, on its own |
| Squint at Stripe payout numbers and try to remember the project | Payments matched to client and project as they land |
| Hunt for that one receipt somewhere in your camera roll | Receipts filed against the transaction the day they arrive |
| Rebuild the same invoice template once a quarter, from scratch | Drafts waiting for you the moment money reaches the account |
| Send your accountant a folder of PDFs and hope for the best | One dated, numbered export they can import without questions |
From people who bill by the project
Quiet software, loud relief.
I have four clients who all pay in increments and none of them write a reference I recognise. Ledgerline was the first thing that did not make me feel stupid about that.
My accountant used to send a two-page list of questions every January. This year she sent one line: this is the cleanest set of books I have had from a sole trader.
We went from three designers invoicing in three different ways to one queue I clear on a Friday afternoon. The multi-currency handling alone paid for the year.
Pricing
Priced like a subscription, not a percentage.
We never take a cut of your invoices. One flat monthly price, whatever you bill. Pay annually and you get two months free.
Solo
£9/month
One designer, one business account, no fuss.
- 1 connected bank account
- Unlimited invoices and estimates
- Unlimited receipts by email
- VAT and GST lines
- CSV and PDF export
- Email support, next working day
Most popular
Studio
£24/month
For freelancers with real overheads and more than one client.
- Everything in Solo
- Up to 3 connected accounts
- Multi-currency at the payment-date rate
- Client portal and payment links
- Quarterly pack for Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent
- Priority support, same working day
Ledger
£59/month
For small studios where more than one person sends invoices.
- Everything in Studio
- Unlimited accounts and team seats
- Custom tax rules and cost categories
- API access and webhooks
- Dedicated onboarding call
- Named support contact
Every plan includes read-only bank connections, bank-grade encryption, and the right to export everything and leave whenever you like. No setup fee, no per-invoice fee, no annual lock-in.
Questions
The things people ask before they connect an account.
Can Ledgerline move money out of my account?
No, and it never will. Connections use read-only open banking access, which means we can retrieve transactions but are structurally unable to initiate a payment. There is no setting to change that, because the permission does not exist in the first place.
What happens when a payment does not match anything?
It stays in the review queue and it says so on your dashboard. We will suggest the most likely client from the sender, amount and reference history, but a suggestion is not an assumption: nothing enters your books, and nothing reaches a tax return, until you confirm it.
Does my accountant have to use Ledgerline?
No. Your accountant keeps whatever tools they already use. You export a dated, numbered bundle and they import it into Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or plain Excel. Most accountants would prefer we never contact them at all.
Which countries and tax systems do you support?
Invoicing and tax lines are generated for 31 countries, including UK VAT (standard, flat rate and reverse charge), EU VAT with MOSS and OSS notes, US sales tax with 1099-friendly categorisation, Australian GST, and Canadian GST/HST. Ledgerline is a record-keeping tool, not a tax adviser: we prepare the numbers, your accountant files them.
What if I work in three currencies in one month?
That is the normal case, not the edge case. Each transaction keeps the exchange rate from the date it actually landed in your account, and the invoice shows both the original amount and your home currency, with the rate and its source recorded for whoever asks later.
Can I get my data out if I leave?
Everything exports: the reconciled ledger, original transactions, invoice PDFs, receipts and your match history. Export is a button on every plan, including the free trial, so you can take a full copy before you ever pay us anything.
I have already sent invoices this year. Is it too late?
No. Import them and Ledgerline marks the deposits they cover so nothing gets billed twice. Historical invoices keep their original numbers and dates, and you can work the backlog at whatever pace suits you.
How does the free trial work?
Thirty days, full features, no card. If you do nothing at the end of it, your account goes read-only and your data stays exactly where it is for another ninety days. We do not charge people who simply forgot to cancel.
Start tonight, finish before the kettle boils
Send your accountant something they will actually thank you for.
Connect one account, clear the queue, watch a quarter of invoices write themselves. If it does not save you an evening in the first month, tell us and we will refund it without a form.
No card required · Read-only access · Full export before you pay