EconomicoAccrual accounting
You care about cash. Investors and the IRS care about accruals.
Get both from the same books, from day one. Every Economico business runs on accrual basis from signup — revenue when it's earned, costs when they're incurred — so you start on the basis serious companies end up on anyway, with no spreadsheet mess and no painful conversion a year or two later. The agent handles the complexity.
"You care about cash; investors and the IRS care about accruals"
That's the split every founder eventually runs into. You watch the bank balance — money in, money out — because it's the only view you can keep yourself in a spreadsheet. But the people who judge your company read a different set of books: what you've earned and what you owe, regardless of when the cash moved. The gap between those two views is exactly where you get surprised — an annual contract that looks like one giant month and then nothing, a bill you paid late that lands in the wrong month, an MRR number and a burn rate that don't survive a second look. Accrual basis closes that gap. It's just always been too much work to keep by hand.
Everyone assumes accrual is the thing you upgrade to later — it's the thing you should have started on
The received wisdom is that cash basis is fine for now and you'll "convert when you're bigger." What actually happens is you pay for that assumption. Most companies go through a painful, paid cash-to-accrual conversion a year or two in — when they raise, get audited, or cross a tax threshold — restating a full year of books at exactly the moment they can least afford the distraction. The reason founders defer it isn't that accrual is wrong for a small company; it's that switching QuickBooks or Xero to accrual leaves you hand-keying an adjusting entry every time a payment lands, so nobody keeps it up. Every Economico business is on accrual from its first transaction. There's no cash-basis trap to climb out of, because you were never in it.
You don't learn accrual — the agent you already use does the recognition and matching
Send an invoice and revenue posts to the period you earned it, not whenever the cash lands. Approve a bill and the expense posts to the period that produced the revenue, so margin reads true. Bill an annual or subscription deal once and it's recognized month by month over its life instead of booked all up front. You ask in plain language; the agent does the deferrals, matching, and journal entries against your real ledger. No adjusting entry to remember, no accounting screen to open.
We just signed a $24k annual contract starting this month. Bill it, then recognize the revenue monthly over the year and show me what hits this month versus what's deferred.
Now you can see the one view cash basis can never show you
Ask for invoiced vs. recognized vs. collected and you get the honest picture of the business in a single answer — what you've billed, what you've actually earned, and what's hit the bank. There's no dashboard to check; you ask your agent. It can also run a GAAP pass over the books to flag revenue booked before it's earned, unamortized prepaids, and unaccrued costs — each with the fix. These are the same books an investor's diligence and an auditor expect, so when the priced round comes you're already standing where it would have forced you to be. No scramble, no restated year, no conversion invoice.
- Invoice sent — work deliveredJan 5
- Cash arrivesFeb 8
"But my taxes are cash-basis"
They can stay that way. Accrual gives you decision-grade and investor-grade books; your accountant still files your taxes however they need to, working from clean records instead of a scattered spreadsheet. You're not choosing accrual instead of cash — you're keeping the earned-and-owed view the people who judge your company read, and letting your accountant derive the cash view for the IRS from the same source of truth. One set of books, both audiences served.
Get started
Start on accrual. Skip the conversion.
Connect the agent you already use and your books are kept on the basis serious companies end up on anyway — from day one.