Your first month with Reportly: an onboarding checklist

Week 1: connect your data

The goal this week is live, verified actuals. Everything else waits until the numbers are right.

• Connect QuickBooks Online. The full walkthrough is in the setup guide; the short version is authorise, pick the company file, done in five minutes.
• Map your chart of accounts. Check three things: revenue accounts mapped as revenue, COGS split from operating expenses, and retired accounts excluded.
• Verify one month. Pick a closed month and reconcile Reportly's P&L against QuickBooks line by line. They should match to the dollar; if not, it's a mapping choice, so fix it now while the model is empty.
• Invite your teammates. Your co-founder or bookkeeper at minimum, with roles set appropriately, so week 4's report has an audience already inside the tool.

If the reconciliation matched, week 1 is done. Don't build anything else on unverified data.

Week 2: build your first budget

The goal is a usable yardstick, not a work of art.

• Choose your starting point: import the budget you already have, or build one from your historical actuals, which Reportly can pre-fill from the connected data.
• Set the period. Calendar year or your fiscal year, monthly granularity.
• Keep it coarse. Ten to fifteen lines: revenue (split by stream only if the streams genuinely differ), COGS, payroll, rent, marketing, software, everything else. You can add department detail later; see the "where people get stuck" section before you're tempted.
• Allocate by department only if department heads will actually own their lines. A budget nobody owns is a spreadsheet with opinions.

A rough budget you'll compare against monthly beats a detailed one you'll abandon. The methodology, if you want it, is in budgeting and forecasting.

Week 3: run your first variance report

The goal is your first real insight: where reality differed from plan, and why.

• Run budget vs actual for the most recent closed month.
• Investigate the top three variances only. Resist explaining all of them; three is the sustainable number.
• Write one sentence of commentary per variance, in the report itself. "Payroll +$4k: contractor covering support, ends March" is the standard to aim for.
• Decide one thing based on what you found: reforecast a line, reallocate a budget, or consciously accept the gap.

If you want the full method behind this step, our variance analysis guide covers materiality thresholds and driver decomposition. For week 3, the three-variances-three-sentences version is exactly enough.

Week 4: produce a board-ready pack

The goal is a distributed report and, quietly, the template for every month after.

• Assemble the pack: P&L, balance sheet, budget vs actual with your commentary, and a cash view.
• Add a one-page narrative on top. What happened, why, what you're doing about it. Write it for someone who'll spend four minutes reading.
• Export and distribute to the teammates you invited in week 1, and to your board or investors if you have a send due.
• Save the pack as your monthly template, so next month is an update, not a rebuild. What good management reporting looks like long-term is covered in management reporting.

What good looks like after 30 days

Concretely, by day 30 you should have: actuals syncing automatically and verified against QuickBooks; a budget coarse enough to maintain; one variance report with three explained gaps and at least one decision made because of it; and one report pack actually sent to someone. That last one is the real activation bar. A report distributed to a real reader creates the expectation of the next one, and that expectation is what turns a tool into a monthly practice. Put a recurring block in your calendar for the monthly loop now, while the momentum exists.

Where new users get stuck

Chart-of-accounts mapping. The most common support topic, and almost always fixable in minutes on the mapping screen. The symptom is a report that doesn't match QuickBooks; the cause is an account in the wrong bucket. This is why week 1 insists on reconciling before building.

Budget granularity. The instinct is to budget at the same detail as your chart of accounts, forty lines deep. Then month one's variance review takes three hours and month two's doesn't happen. Start coarse. Detail is easy to add and painful to remove.

Over-engineering the first forecast. Scenario trees, driver models, and department rollups are all real capabilities, and none of them belong in week 2. The first version's job is to exist and be compared against. Sophistication is a month-three upgrade, once the loop is a habit.

Frequently asked questions

How long does setup take?

The QuickBooks connection takes about five minutes; a careful first week including mapping and reconciliation is two to three hours total. The four-week arc in this post is deliberate pacing, not required effort.

Do I need an accountant to get started?

No. If a bookkeeper maintains your QuickBooks, invite them to check the account mapping, but everything in this checklist is founder-doable.

Can I import an existing budget?

Yes, or you can build one from your synced historical actuals inside Reportly.

What if my chart of accounts is messy?

Connect anyway; the mapping screen makes the mess visible and lets you organize it on the Reportly side. Tidying the source in QuickBooks is worth doing eventually, but it doesn't block your first month.

Who can help if I get stuck?

Contact support; mapping questions in particular are quick to resolve live. The setup guide covers the common connection issues too.

Week 1 starts with one click: connect QuickBooks on the integrations page, and work down the checklist from there.