The first week of the month
The bookkeeper of a ceramics studio works two days a week, and the first week of the month eats both of them. Shopify paid out on four different days, each payout net of fees and one refund. Faire paid for three wholesale orders in one transfer. Two boutiques on 30-day terms have not paid at all, and one of them says it never got the invoice.
Then comes cost. The studio bought clay, glaze materials and gift boxes in October, some of it with freight on a separate invoice. To know the margin on the oat mug, somebody has to know what went into the mugs made in October, which lives in the production lead’s notebook.
By the time the numbers are ready, nobody needs them any more. The owner already made the decisions they were for.
Why the close takes three weeks
The accounting system is rarely the bottleneck. Everything that has to be typed into it is.
- Invoices typed twice. Once in the sales tool, once in the accounting system, with a chance of a different number each time.
- Payments without orders. A transfer arrives with a reference nobody recognizes.
- Cost of goods from memory. Materials, freight and labor are in three places, and the cost in the books is last year’s.
- Old months that keep moving. Somebody edits an order from August, and the August figures you already sent are no longer true.
What changes in Keelvy
The paper comes from the sale
Issue the invoice, delivery note or credit note from the order, under each company’s own numbering and in its own style. Send a customer or a supplier a statement of what they owe.
QuickBooks, Xero or Mercury, without retyping
Connect the accounting system each company uses. Keelvy sends it every invoice under your own number and records the payment back when the invoice is paid there.
Who owes what, and for how long
Record payment days and a credit limit for each customer. See what customers owe and what you owe suppliers, by age, and enter supplier bills against the purchase orders they belong to.
Cost of goods that is the real cost
Material prices, landed cost, labor rates and overhead reach the product’s cost through its bill of materials. Cost variance shows where the actual cost drifted from the plan.
A month that stays closed
Close the month for each company and lock its past periods, so the figures you reported stop moving. Read profit and loss, and plan cash with a calendar of what comes in and goes out.
Room for your accountant
Invite an outside accountant with a role that reads the figures and changes nothing, and let them download the year for the return. Commissions owed to sales reps and marketplaces sit below gross profit where they belong.
Example: closing October
A ceramics studio with a US company keeps its books in QuickBooks Online. In October it issued 212 invoices across Shopify, Faire and wholesale accounts.
- Each invoice went to QuickBooks the day it was issued, under the studio’s own number. 197 are already marked paid in Keelvy, because they were paid there.
- The aging report shows 15 open, $6,840 in total. Two are past 30 days; both customers get a statement that afternoon.
- The freight invoice for the clay delivery is spread over the clay. The oat mug’s October cost comes out at $6.12 against a planned $5.80, and cost variance points to the glaze.
- The bookkeeper closes October and locks it. An edit to an October order now needs a correction in November, not a rewrite of history.
The result. October closes on November 4. The owner reads a margin that includes the freight.
What Keelvy does not do
- It does not file tax returns. It prepares the figures; you or your accountant file.
- It does not calculate sales tax for your stores. It records the tax each channel charged, so the figure is there when you need it.
- It does not ask you to leave QuickBooks, Xero or Mercury. If your accountant works there, the invoices and payments go there.
