Contents

Set Up Your Business

How to Import Your Books

4 min read

By the end, My Business will hold your sales and expenses, built from your own files, and Financial Summary will present how revenue turns into cash you keep.

Before You Start

  • Where it is: "Import Your Business" on an empty My Business home. Once there are numbers, it's "Import Financials" on My Business, or "Import" in the "Edit Financials" sidebar.
  • What it costs: free on every plan, no credits. You get one import a month plus a retry if it goes wrong, resetting on the 1st. A try that fails never counts.
  • What you need: ideally a sales export from your POS and an export or sheet of your expenses. If you don't have these, start with a .csv or .xls of whatever you have and we'll fill the gaps with questions.

Steps

  1. Finish Basics. Fill in "Business Info", "Your Story" and "Your Info". Until then the upload boxes are greyed out.

  2. Drop your files into the three boxes. "Sales" takes each sale with its date and what sold. "Expenses" takes a bank, card or accounting export. "Costs And Anything Else" takes what each thing you sell costs you, plus stock, cash, loans, or one file with everything. None is required. Add a note under any file if it needs clarification. Screenshot to come: The import page with Occam's greeting above the Sales, Expenses and Costs And Anything Else boxes, two files staged (import-three-boxes.png)

  3. Check the settings bar. "Baseline Period" defaults to the most recent 12 months; "Change" offers a 1–12 month slider or a "Custom" range. Whatever period you pick is scaled up to a normal year, so pick the months that look like the business today. The default is the last 12 months and we recommend keeping it there. If, however, you haven't been in business that long or things have really changed in, say, the last three months, then set it to the appropriate baseline that best reflects your business today. Also, set "Fiscal Year Ends" if it isn't December.

  4. Click "Read These Files". You can close the window: the tray at the bottom of every page shows progress, and an email arrives if you weren't watching. Screenshot to come: Occam's waiting message with the stage label and time estimate, and the suggestion to read the Quickstart Guide or complete your Personal Audit meanwhile (import-reading-files.png)

  5. Talk it through. Occam lays out the shape of your business with what each part comes to in a typical month. Keep each section ("Keep It This Way"), pick an alternative, or say it differently, then answer the few facts only you know. Skipped answers become best guesses, marked as assumed. Click "Work Through The Numbers" to build the draft. Screenshot to come: The conversation with Occam showing the proposed layout card and the Keep It This Way option (import-talk-it-through.png)

  6. Review the proposal. "Your Business In A Normal Year" shows what you sell and where it goes, on one page. Read anything under "Needs Your Answer" before you approve.

    If your baseline period was less than 12 months, remember that this is an annualized presentation (e.g., if you chose a baseline of the last three months, financials are scaled up to what they would be over a year).

    Screenshot to come: The one-page proposal with What You Sell, Where It Goes and the Approve And Build button (import-proposal.png)

  7. Approve. Click "Approve And Build" ("Approve And Replace Your Numbers" if My Business already has numbers). The Financial Summary opens.

Tips

  • "Ask For A Change" takes a note and revises the same proposal, up to 2 times, without using an import. A change we can't make from your files says so and doesn't count toward the 2. "Start Over" discards the draft, and the next try uses an import.
  • "Change The Period" → "Rebuild" re-cuts the proposal on another baseline, free.
  • Files rarely hold loans and cards, customer and vendor terms, or equipment bought more than a year ago. Add them afterwards, according to Complete the Picture (next step). Equipment and other lasting purchases your files do show are asked about in the conversation and recorded for you.

Common Questions

Will approving overwrite numbers I typed in?
Yes: your sales, direct costs and operating expenses, and your own pay if the files show it. An inventory balance from an earlier import is replaced too; one you typed yourself stays. Investments you typed in stay; purchases an earlier import recorded for the same months are refreshed. Funding and the rest of cash timing stay.

Can I see the row-by-row detail?
Yes. "See Every Row" on the proposal opens every line the import built.

What if my files have no sales or costs over time?
Occam says so, and that try doesn't use your monthly import.