How to run your business finances inside your CRM

Step 1: Set up your ledger

Budget: 3-5 minutes for initial setup. The Finance module lives at Finance in the left sidebar. The first thing to do is record your first few transactions so the dashboard has real data to show.

Go to Finance > Ledger > New entry. You will see a simple form:

• Type: Income or Expense.
• Amount and currency: enter the number and pick a currency code (USD, EUR, GBP, etc.). Each entry stores its own currency; there is no forced conversion.
• Category: pick an existing category or type a new one. Categories are color-coded and archivable. Good starting categories for most businesses: Software, Ads & Marketing, Contractors, Facilities, Consulting (income), Retainer (income).
• Description: a short note (e.g., "Figma annual renewal", "Invoice INV-2026-0184 - Northwind Studio").
• Date: when the transaction occurred. You can backfill historical entries.
• Contact (optional): link to a CRM contact for per-customer attribution (covered in Step 4).

Save. Repeat for any transactions you want to seed from the current or previous months. Ten to fifteen real entries are enough for the dashboard to become useful.

Honest note: This is an operational ledger, not double-entry bookkeeping. It does not maintain a chart of accounts, debits and credits, or a formal general ledger. For tax filing or statutory accounts, export the data and work with your accountant.

Step 2: Create and send an invoice

Budget: 2 minutes per invoice. Go to Finance > Invoices > New.

1. Link to a contact: search and select the CRM contact this invoice is for. This ties the invoice to the customer record.
2. Issue date and due date: CRM Solid pre-fills today as the issue date. Set a due date (e.g., Net 30).
3. Line items: click "Add line item" for each service or product. Enter description, quantity, and unit price. Subtotal, tax (percentage), and total are computed for you.
4. Invoice number: auto-assigned in the format INV-YYYY-NNNN so numbering is sequential and consistent.
5. Save as Draft. Draft invoices do not affect the ledger.
6. Mark Sent once you have delivered the invoice to the client. The status moves from Draft to Sent, and if the due date passes without payment, it automatically becomes Overdue.

Invoice statuses in order: Draft → Sent → Paid (or Overdue if the due date passes) → Cancelled if voided. Overdue is flagged automatically; you do not have to manage it manually.

Step 3: Mark an invoice Paid - watch it auto-post

Budget: 10 seconds. When the client pays, open the invoice and click Mark Paid.

CRM Solid does two things at once:

1. Changes the invoice status to Paid.
2. Automatically creates an income entry in your ledger for the full invoice total - tagged to the same contact and dated today. This happens once and only once, so there is no risk of double-posting if you open the invoice again.

You can verify this by going to Finance > Ledger and looking for the entry labelled with the invoice number. It will be there within seconds.

Tip: if a client pays a partial amount, record the partial payment as a manual income entry linked to the same contact and note the invoice number in the description. Then keep the invoice as Sent until the balance is cleared.

Step 4: Link ledger entries to CRM contacts

Budget: adds 5 seconds per entry. Any ledger entry - whether created manually or auto-posted from an invoice - can be linked to a CRM contact. This is the feature that makes CRM Solid Finance different from a spreadsheet: you can open any contact and see exactly how much revenue they have generated or how much you have spent on them.

To link an existing entry: open the entry from Finance > Ledger, click Edit, and use the Contact search field. Save.

To see a contact's full finance history: open the contact record from Contacts, scroll to the Finance tab. You will see all invoices and ledger entries linked to that contact, with totals for lifetime income and outstanding invoices.

This per-contact attribution is useful when deciding which clients are worth a renewal proposal, a discount, or an upsell conversation.

Step 5: Set budgets and track spend

Budget: 2 minutes for initial setup. Go to Finance > Budgets > New.

• Category: pick a specific category (e.g., "Ads & Marketing") or "All spend" for a single overall cap.
• Period: Monthly or Yearly. Monthly is better for controllable opex like software subscriptions; yearly is better for project or capex budgets.
• Limit: the dollar (or other currency) amount you do not want to exceed.

Once saved, the budget appears in Finance > Budgets as a progress bar. The bar color shifts:

• Green (below 70%): On track.
• Amber (70-90%): Watch - you are approaching the limit.
• Near-red (90-100%): Critical.
• Red (over 100%): Over budget; the bar clearly marks the overrun amount.

Actuals come straight from your completed expense transactions in the matching category - no manual tallying. Add more categories as your spending complexity grows.

Step 6: Automate recurring entries

Budget: 1 minute per template. Any expense or income that repeats on a schedule is a candidate for a recurring template. Good examples: office rent, SaaS tool subscriptions, client retainers, domain renewals, payroll contributions.

Go to Finance > Recurring > New template:

1. Name: e.g., "Office rent", "Acme retainer", "SaaS subscriptions bundle".
2. Type: Income or Expense.
3. Amount and category: same fields as a manual entry.
4. Interval: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly.
5. Next run date: the first date you want the entry to post.
6. End date (optional): set if the recurring arrangement has a known end, e.g., "Dec 2026" for a fixed-term retainer. Leave blank for indefinite.

Save. From that point, CRM Solid posts the entry to the ledger on each run date without any action from you. You can pause or resume any template from the Recurring list at any time. Paused templates do not post; they resume from the next scheduled date when you un-pause them.

Step 7: Read the finance dashboard

Budget: 2 minutes, daily or weekly. Go to Finance. The top of the page shows three summary cards for your selected date range:

• Income: total completed income entries. Includes auto-posted invoice payments and manual income.
• Expense: total completed expense entries.
• Net: income minus expenses for the period.

Use the date range toggle (7d, 30d, This month) to shift the window. Below the summary cards:

• Income vs Expense chart: daily bars showing income and expense side by side. Useful for spotting the days or weeks when costs spiked.
• By category doughnut: expense breakdown by category as percentages. Useful for quickly seeing which category is consuming the most budget.
• Recent transactions: the last few ledger entries with contact name, category, and amount.
• Outstanding: count and total of unpaid (Sent/Overdue) invoices, with invoice numbers and statuses.

The dashboard only reflects completed entries. Draft invoices and entries marked as pending do not appear in totals, so the numbers represent real money in and out.

Step 8: Monthly close routine

A 10-minute close at month end keeps your data clean and your accountant happy. In order:

1. Clear overdue invoices. Go to Finance > Invoices and filter by Overdue. Chase any that are still open or mark them Cancelled if they will not be paid.
2. Review budgets. Go to Finance > Budgets. Note any category that went over. Adjust next month's budget limit or the spend target, whichever is more realistic.
3. Verify recurring entries posted. Go to Finance > Recurring and confirm the last-run date on each template matches the expected date. If a template was paused and you forgot to resume it, the entries will be missing - add them manually.
4. Export the ledger. Go to Finance > Ledger > Export CSV. The export includes date, type, category, amount, currency, contact name, and description. Send this to your accountant alongside any invoices they need.
5. Check the Net figure. Open the Finance dashboard, set the date range to the month you just closed, and note the Net total. Compare it to last month. If it moved significantly in either direction, check the Income vs Expense chart to find the cause.

Remember: CRM Solid Finance is an operational tool. For preparing statutory accounts, calculating depreciation, or filing corporate tax returns, work with a qualified accountant and use the CSV export as source data.