You exported the CSV in ninety seconds. It is three hundred lines of STRIPE*PAYOUT 8FQ2, TESCO*PAYPASS and OCTOPUS ENERGY DD — with no idea which deposit was the Calderón rebrand and which was the poster series you undercharged for.
Ledgerline matches every deposit to the client and job behind it, drafts the invoice, files the expense categories, and puts a pen through anything it can't work out. You only rule on the red ink.
Bring one statement. No bank password, no open-banking permission, no card to start the free tier.
| Date | Description | Amount | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Oct | Calderón Studios — brand system, phase 1 | £1,840.00 | Design income |
| 21 Oct | M. Okafor — poster series ×40 | £420.00 | Design income |
| 20 Oct | Two jobs, one payment — split it? | £675.00 | red ink your ruling |
| 18 Oct | Adobe Creative Cloud | −£48.99 | Software · allowable |
| 17 Oct | Farrow Print Co — paper stock | −£131.20 | Production · allowable |
| 16 Oct | Sainsbury's, Holloway Rd | −£62.13 | not business |
| 24 Oct | STRIPE*PAYOUT 8FQ2KL | £1,840.00 | — |
| 21 Oct | PAYPAL *JUNIPERDSGN | £420.00 | — |
| 20 Oct | REVOLUT RECURRING C.CHEN | £675.00 | — |
| 18 Oct | ADOBE *4CLOUD UK | −£48.99 | — |
| 17 Oct | FARROW PRINT DIRECT | −£131.20 | — |
| 16 Oct | SAINSBURY'S HD3390 | −£62.13 | — |
matched with evidence · red ink needs your ruling · struck out, off the books
Switch to the raw export to see what actually arrives. The client names are what Ledgerline reconstructed from your invoice history — nothing here was invented.
You were trained to present work, scope it, and price it. You were not trained to sit in at nine pm in January with a two-hundred-line CSV, a folder of Figma files named CLIENT-X_FINAL_FINAL_v9, and a self-assessment deadline on 31 January asking you to reconstruct which of those deposits were income, which of those Amazon charges were claimable books, and why invoice #0087 — the one you meant to send in June — simply never went out.
The money arrived. The paperwork didn't. Ledgerline closes that gap with one file you already know how to export, and it never asks for more.
| L01 |
You exportCSV or OFX from Monzo, Starling, Revolut, Tandem, Teller, Wise, or the “download statements” page of any high-street bank. Ledgerline accepts the file format, not your password. |
≈ 90 seconds · monthly |
|---|---|---|
| L02 |
Deposits meet their clientsMatching runs on your own history first — invoice numbers in payment references, amounts that echo a quote you sent, a payer who has always been Calderón. Only what your history can't settle goes to the pattern library, and pattern guesses are always labelled as guesses. |
runs while you upload |
| L03 |
You rule on the red inkAnything Ledgerline can't settle with evidence — a payment covering two jobs, a client who paid the wrong amount on purpose — arrives in the review column in red. Split it, reassign it, or strike it. The ruling is remembered for the next statement. |
5 minutes · the only part that's you |
| L04 |
The folder gets builtEverything L01–L03 resolved becomes a dated export: invoice PDFs numbered from your first job, categories.csv, a quarterly summary. The original CSV rides along untouched, because an audit wants the original. |
automatic · downloadable |
Your accountant gets a folder, not a subscription they have to log into. Xero and FreeAgent imports are one click from the same data.
Most “AI bookkeeping” makes a guess and files it as fact. When your tax return depends on who a deposit came from, a silent wrong guess is worse than no guess.
Ledgerline marks its own homework. Every matched row carries its evidence — “paid by CALDERON STUDIOS LTD six times, all £40+”, “invoice #0087 quoted £1,840, matches to the penny”. If the evidence is a pattern rather than your own history, the row gets red ink and waits for you. Nothing red files itself. After a year you'll have ruled on perhaps thirty rows, and the file keeps your rulings.
The categories are boring on purpose: design income, software, production, travel, training, home office (flat compounding rate), client entertainment (flagged: not allowable). Boring categories are what a self-assessment return is made of.
Review queue · Thu 23 Oct
Send Ledgerline the invoices you did file — a folder of PDFs, a CSV, or nothing at all to start — and it reconstructs client books from the payments they've made you since 2021. First run, the Calderón rebrand pays out of a pattern you forgot existed.
UK-region storage. Delete your account and every statement, draft invoice, and ruling goes within thirty days, with a plain-text receipt saying so. No “anonymised training data”, ever — because we'd have to write that to your accountant.
Charged monthly, cancelled in one click, annual billing gets two months free. The free tier is not a demo — it is a real quarter of bookkeeping.
| Ledgerlight £0, forever | Solo £9 a month | Studio £24 a month | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statement lines | 120 per quarter | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Client books & red-ink review | Yes, all of it | Yes, all of it | Yes, all of it |
| Invoice PDFs | Watermarked | Your logo, your numbering | Your logo, shared numbering across seats |
| Seats | 1 | 1 | 3, plus read-only accountant seat |
| Xero / FreeAgent import | — | — | Yes |
| Start | Try the sample statement | Email us a statement | Ask about Studio |
No card needed for Ledgerlight. Solo and Studio are invoiced by us like you invoice your clients — a PDF with a number on it.
Anything that exports CSV or OFX: Monzo, Starling, Revolut, Tandem, Teller, Wise, Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, NatWest. If your bank's export has date, description, and amount columns, that's the whole requirement. Bank letterhead is not needed and never checked.
It's a copy of a file you already have, with no login credentials in it, uploaded to UK servers, hashed so we can prove we didn't edit it, and deletable by you in one click. It is the least access you can give a bookkeeping tool and still get bookkeeping. If even that feels like too much, the free tier exists to let you decide with the file deleted after.
No, and we won't let you think it does. Ledgerline produces the categories and summaries your return is built from. The return itself — and the judgement calls in it — stay with you and your accountant. We are a paperwork tool, not an accounting firm.
categories.csv carries a VAT treatment column per row, defaulting to standard-rate-reclaimable on your software and production lines. Flat-rate and MTDS users get the matching scheme flags; your accountant overrides anything they dislike.
The commonest red-ink case. Ledgerline finds both open invoices for that payer, shows you the arithmetic, and you split the line. The split is remembered next time they do it — which they will, in July, without a word of warning.
Then there's no invoice to match to, and Ledgerline drafts one for you from the deposit and your quote history — numbered, dated to the payment, sent as a correction rather than pretending June happened. Your accountant gets to file income as income instead of as a mystery.