Read the Books Health panel

Books Health is HQ's standing check on your bookkeeping: unmatched payments, out-of-balance entries, missing categories, and similar issues.

1. Go to Ledger › Health (a summary also sits on the Ledger Dashboard).

Each open finding is a card grouped by category. A card shows only its title and how serious it is, so the list stays short: click the title row to open it. Open, a card gives you the details, a More Info explanation and a fix action, and you can dismiss or snooze ones that don't apply. When everything is clean you get a green all-clear panel. Use Re-check after you've made changes to refresh the findings.

Fix some cards right on the card

A few cards list the exact items behind them and let you deal with each one without leaving the panel. Every one of these asks you to confirm first, and says which item it is about, so nothing changes on a single click:

• A connected mailbox isn't assigned to a book names the mailbox by its address. Assign to followed by your business's name hands it that mailbox.
• The card saying open bills look already paid says, for each bill, why it looks paid: a PAID stamp, nothing left to pay on the document, an exact bank match, or a phone scan. Reclassify to receipt moves that bill out of Accounts Payable. A bill matched to a bank line has no such button: open it and undo the match first.
• On the card saying bank transactions aren't categorized, Suggest a category looks at how you coded that supplier before and offers it, with Apply to use it. If there is no history, categorize it in Banking.
• Invoices are overdue: Draft reminder writes a reminder you can read and edit. Nothing goes to the customer until you click Send reminder. An invoice you reminded in the last twelve hours asks you to confirm before drafting another.
• On the card saying bank transactions have no receipt attached, No receipt expected tells HQ a supplier never sends one. It covers every charge from them, and Undo (or Banking › Rules) puts it back.

Each item says straight away what was done, or why it could not be done. The card itself is worked out on a schedule, so it can stay in the list until the next check, and an overdue invoice you reminded stays on it until it is paid. Reminding a customer does not make an invoice any less overdue.

Ask your accountant about a card

Some cards say the next step is a question for your accountant. Those cards carry a button that writes the email for you. When your accountant is in your directory (Contacts, then the Directory card) the button reads Ask followed by their first name, or the firm's name. It opens a new message to them with the card's title as the subject and the card's own figures in the body, and nothing goes out until you press Send. A tax card goes to the person you marked for tax, anything else to your main contact there. A card written for a bookkeeper goes to your bookkeeper first, with your accountant offered as a copy.

When your bookkeeper is in the directory too, the message offers Also CC with their name, unticked. Tick it to copy them in. It is never ticked for you, and HQ does not remember the choice for next time.

With no accountant in the directory yet, the button reads Add your accountant and opens the form to add one. If HQ has found your accountant but you have not confirmed them, it reads Review your accountant and opens their entry so you can. Only people you have confirmed are ever written to.

After you ask

Once you send the email, the card remembers the question. A line under the card's title says who you asked and when, and it changes as things move:

• While you wait it reads, for example, "Asked Sarah Chen on 12 Oct", with Open the email to see what you sent. A scheduled email shows as scheduled until it goes out, and an email you undo is forgotten.
• After a week with no reply it reads "No reply yet", with Nudge to send a short follow-up as a reply on the same email. The follow-up opens in Compose first, so you can change it or not send it at all.
• When they reply, it reads "Sarah Chen replied on 14 Oct" with the reply's opening words and Read the reply. An automatic reply, such as an out of office message, does not count, and neither does another email from you.
• If nothing comes back within three months, the card stops waiting and offers Ask again.

Once the question has gone quiet, or a reply has come in, the line also offers They answered, which closes the question, for example when the answer came by phone or in a different email.

A reply does not clear the card. The card goes when the thing it found is put right, so read what they said and do it. If you change who the email is addressed to before sending, the card says "Asked by email" rather than naming someone you did not write to.

While a question is waiting for an answer, the card moves out of your list into a Waiting on someone group at the bottom of the panel, and it is not counted in the number on the sidebar. It comes back to your list when the reply arrives, when a week passes with no reply, or when the card stops waiting.

Credit cards and lines of credit get their own reminder cards: due soon, looks unpaid, or can't confirm when your bank data stops before the due date. See Get reminded to pay a credit card or line of credit.

Supplier bills get one card too: how many approved bills are past their due date, and how many fall due in the next seven days, with what is owed on each. It counts only bills with a due date, the same bills Reports › AP Aging shows. If you already paid one, record the payment and it drops off the card. A bill whose whole balance you marked sent on Bill Pay drops off too while the money is on its way. It comes back if more than ten days pass and HQ has no bank data for that account to check the payment against.

A payment you marked sent on Bill Pay that has not reached the bank gets its own card, sent payments not in the bank. It waits until your bank data for that account runs more than ten days past the day you marked it sent, so a statement you upload once a month does not set it off early. A payment from a prepaid balance, which never has a statement, counts once more than ten days have passed since you marked it sent. The card names each payment by supplier, the day it was sent, its amount and its account, and lists any bank line of exactly that amount nearby, including one that was given a category rather than matched to a bill. A line of the same amount is not proof it is the payment: check whether it is. When you have found the payment's line, match it to the bill; use Record payment on a prepaid balance, or unsend a payment that never went out.

Cards about money that should have reached the bank name each record behind them. The card saying payouts have no matching bank deposit lists each payout by processor, date and amount, and its button opens that payout. The card saying payouts have been held out of your books appears when a processor payout has waited more than 7 days to be recorded. It lists each payout by processor, date and amount with the reason it is held, and its button opens that payout on Ledger › Banking › Payouts. A Square or Shopify sale paid by gift card that HQ is holding is listed on the same card, with its reason. Until a held payout is recorded, its sales and fees are not in your reports. The card saying more gift cards have been spent than HQ has seen sold appears when Gift Card Liability is below zero, and lists the sales paid by gift card behind it: cards sold before HQ's history belong in that account's opening balance, and cards sold for cash are recorded by categorizing the bank deposit to it. The card saying recorded payments have no bank deposit lists each payment by client, invoice number and date. The card saying card-paid bills have no matching charge lists each bill with the card it says paid it. Under the records you may see bank lines of exactly the same amount that HQ could not match: dated a few weeks away from the payout or payment, set aside in Banking, or recorded the opposite way round. For a card bill, only money going out is listed. When the bill names a specific card and a charge of its amount sits on a different account, the card asks you to check whether the bill was paid from that account instead. These lines are places to look first, not answers. A payment's amount is what went into Undeposited Funds for it, so a processor fee or a part paid straight to the bank is already taken off.

The checks that compare an account with the documents behind it (Accounts Receivable against open invoices, Accounts Payable against open bills, Undeposited Funds against the payments waiting to be deposited) name the invoices or bills that disagree with their own entries, largest first. Each row says what the account holds for that document and what it should hold, in debit or in credit, and how far apart the two are. An issued invoice whose entry never reached the books is listed too. They also list any entries typed by hand into that account, since no document explains those.

On a phone, the same findings appear in Needs you on the Money screen, below the lines for bills to review, charges to categorize and payouts not matched to the bank (a finding one of those lines already covers is not repeated), with Open to go where the fix lives and a button to put the card aside. On a finding that recurs the button reads Not now and the finding comes back on its own later. On a one-off it reads Dismiss, which is permanent, so HQ offers Undo for a few seconds after you tap it.

You can also just ask the assistant: "is anything wrong with my books?", and it reads the same findings back to you with what to do and where to go. It only reads them: fixing, dismissing and snoozing still happen here on the panel.

The assistant can go further than the findings list when you ask it why something is off. It can pull the individual entries behind a ledger account, find a specific bank line by description or amount, and re-run the tie-out checks live rather than quoting the last scheduled sweep. So "why is my credit card balance wrong?" gets you the entries that moved it, not just the total. It is still read-only: anything that changes your books is offered as a draft you approve. The draft's button names what it will do, such as Record payment or Approve bill, and any entry it would post is listed with its Debit and Credit columns. Press the button to go ahead, or Not now to leave it. Nothing changes until you press the button.