DTC brand closes the month in two days with six payment and bank feeds reconciled by AI
Shopify and Stripe payouts, two bank accounts and a card feed are categorized and matched automatically, so the MTD VAT return is prepared from a reconciled ledger instead of a spreadsheet.
Feeds reconciled automatically
6
Month-end close
2 days
Transactions auto-categorized
94%
Before HelloBooks
Every payout from Shopify and Stripe arrived net of fees and had to be split back into sales, refunds and processing charges by hand. Transfers between the two bank accounts were regularly booked as income and then reversed. The close took nine working days, and the quarterly VAT return was compiled from a spreadsheet the founder no longer fully trusted.
After HelloBooks
All six feeds flow into one ledger. The AI recognises payout patterns and posts sales, refunds and fees to the right accounts, treats inter-account transfers as transfers, and flags the handful of lines it is unsure about. The close is a two-day review of exceptions, and the VAT return is prepared from the reconciled ledger.
The brand sells through its own Shopify store and a marketplace, takes payment through Stripe and the store's own gateway, and runs two business bank accounts plus a company card. Six feeds, each with its own idea of what a transaction looks like. The founder had been doing the books with a part-time bookkeeper on a rules-based tool. The rules worked for the easy lines and fell over on the ones that mattered: a payout that combined forty orders, three refunds and a fee; a transfer from the main account to the savings account; a marketplace settlement that netted advertising charges against sales. Each month those were untangled in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet was the real ledger. After connecting the feeds to HelloBooks, the AI's first pass categorized just over nine in ten transactions without help, and the review queue held the rest with a proposed treatment and a reason. Payouts are recognised as payouts and split into their components; transfers between the brand's own accounts are matched to each other rather than posted as income; the recurring subscriptions and the monthly marketplace fees post consistently each period. The close is now a two-day exercise: the bookkeeper works the exception queue, checks the payout splits against the platform reports, and locks the period. The quarterly VAT return is prepared from that reconciled ledger — the spreadsheet is retired, and the founder's accountant reviews the books in a free reviewer seat instead of receiving an export by email.
“The payouts were the whole problem. Once the AI understood that a Shopify deposit is forty orders and a fee, the rest of the month sorted itself out.”
Illustrative scenario — composite example, not a named customer
Integrations used
- Shopify
- Stripe
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