Getting Started with StretchBooks

What StretchBooks is

StretchBooks is the accounting app inside StretchSuite — the StretchSuite equivalent of QuickBooks. It runs the whole money cycle in one place: quoting, invoicing, collecting payments, tracking spending, and reporting. Everything you create is scoped to your organization, so you only ever see your own books.

The tabs at a glance

StretchBooks is organized into tabs across the top of the app:

• Dashboard — live totals for receivables, payables, invoiced amounts, and expenses.
• Reports — Profit & Loss, Tax Summary, and A/R and A/P aging.
• Invoices — bills you send to customers.
• Estimates — quotes that convert into invoices.
• Customers — the people and businesses you bill.
• Vendors — the people and businesses you pay.
• Expenses — money you've spent, coded to an account.
• Bills — amounts you owe vendors (payables).
• Payments — money received against invoices.
• Transactions — the posted-transaction ledger.
• Chart of Accounts — the accounts your money is organized into.
• Settings — currency, tax defaults, numbering, and payment terms.

Key concepts

A few ideas make everything else fall into place:

• Line items do the math. Invoices, estimates, and bills are built from lines — each line is a description, a quantity, a unit price, and an optional tax code. StretchBooks calculates line tax, subtotal, tax, and grand total for you. You never type a total by hand.
• Documents have a lifecycle. An invoice moves Draft → Sent → Paid, and can be Void or written off. An estimate is Draft → Sent, and can be converted into an invoice.
• Money is precise and multi-currency. Amounts are stored to the cent and shown in your currency, defaulting to CAD. You can set a different currency per record.
• Numbers are automatic. Invoices and estimates are numbered from a prefix plus a running counter (for example INV-1042), which you control in Settings.
• Customers and vendors are reusable profiles. Each carries a billing email, payment terms, and currency so you don't retype them on every document.

First-run checklist

Do these five things once and the rest of the app runs smoothly.

1. Set your defaults in Settings. Open Settings and confirm your base currency (CAD by default), default payment terms (for example 14 days), and your invoice and estimate prefixes and starting numbers. See Configuring StretchBooks Settings and Numbering for every field.
2. Review your tax codes. Open the tax codes list and make sure the codes you need are active — for example GST 5% or HST (Ontario) 13%, plus an Exempt / Zero-rated code. Optionally set a default tax code in Settings so new lines pick it up automatically.
3. Check your chart of accounts. Confirm you have the accounts you'll use — a revenue account, one or more expense accounts, and cash/bank accounts. Expenses must be coded to an expense-type account.
4. Add a customer. Go to Customers → New, enter a display name and billing email, and set payment terms and currency (or leave them to inherit your defaults).
5. Create your first invoice. Go to Invoices → New, pick the customer, add a line, and save.

Worked example: your first invoice

Say you run Northlight Coaching and want to bill Harbor & Vine Studio for six coaching sessions.

1. In Customers, add Harbor & Vine Studio with a billing email and 14-day terms.
2. In Invoices → New, select Harbor & Vine Studio as the customer.
3. Add a line: description "1:1 coaching session", quantity 6, unit price $150.00, tax code GST 5%.
4. StretchBooks shows subtotal $900.00, GST $45.00, total $945.00, and assigns a number like INV-1042 with a due date 14 days out.
5. Save as Draft to review, then use Send to issue it. When you receive the money, record a Payment against it.

Tips

• Set a default tax code in Settings so most invoices need no per-line tax choice.
• Fill in each customer's billing email now — it's what receipts and (when enabled) online-payment links use.
• Save documents as Draft while you build them; a customer is only required once you Send.
• Use the Dashboard as your morning check-in: open receivables tells you who owes you, open payables tells you what you owe.

FAQ

Do I need accounting experience? No. If you can fill in a description, quantity, and price, StretchBooks handles the accounting math and tax.

Can other people in my organization use it? Yes — StretchBooks is org-scoped, so everyone in your organization works from the same books.

What currency does it use? CAD by default. You can change the base currency in Settings and override it per customer, vendor, or document.