The insights desk
Bookkeeping insights, in plain answers.
Excello's bookkeeping insights answer the questions founders and finance leads ask most: how the month-end close works, what good bookkeeping looks like and how to keep the numbers trustworthy.
Each guide opens with the direct answer, then explains it step by step.
Latest guides
7 guides
If your books take more than a week to close each month, start with the month-end close guide.
Payroll
Startup payroll services best practices
What payroll services do, ten payroll habits for startups, choosing a payroll option, a payroll calendar and how a pay run is recorded in the books.
Bookkeeping
What expense category is software?
Where each kind of software cost goes, how to record annual plans, how to categorize expenses consistently and for tax, and tools that help.
Reporting
Financial dashboard examples for startups
What a financial dashboard is, what to track by type of startup, a sample dashboard, the metric formulas and how to build one on closed books.
Automation
How to automate bookkeeping
Seven steps to automate bookkeeping, what software does and what people still do, automating the ledger and accounts payable, bank reconciliation in Excel, and automating your finances.
Bookkeeping
How to do bookkeeping
Setting up a bookkeeping system, the weekly and monthly routine, a worked ledger and bank reconciliation, manual versus software, and the habits of good bookkeeping.
Fundraising
What is a cap table?
What a cap table records, what it is for in a startup, a seed round worked through, cap table management and the common mistakes.
The close
What is a month-end close?
The seven steps of a month-end close, why it matters, why it takes so long and how it differs from a year-end close.
How these guides are written
House rules
Guides are written for founders and finance leads at startups and small businesses, in plain language, with every term explained where it first appears.