OBSCURA for accountants and finance teams
Bank statements, payroll exports, a client’s receipts for the year: finance work runs on files that describe someone’s whole financial life. These tools read, reconcile and hand them over in the browser, so a statement is never uploaded to a converter or an expenses app to get the job done.
The applications a practice works in
The single tools further down each do one job on one file. These four are applications, for the books, the practice and the papers that go on all year. Each is paid for, on its own or with the rest of Pro, and each keeps its work in the browser on the computer it runs on: no figures are uploaded and there is no account to make.
OBSCURA Books
Double-entry bookkeeping for a sole trader, a landlord or a small company, in whole pence so the trial balance agrees to the last one. Bank statements come in as CSV, OFX, QFX or QIF, with the columns mapped once and rules for the regular lines, and are reconciled against the statement. VAT invoices, bills and aged debtors; the nine-box VAT return on the standard or flat rate scheme, each box opening on the lines behind it; and the year end, with an accountant’s pack and the SA103 and SA105 figures.
It works the VAT return out and does not submit it: that takes HMRC-recognised bridging software. UK VAT only, no payroll, and one person at a time. A client’s books travel to the accountant as one .obooks file.
OBSCURA Practice
For the practice itself: clients with their identity checks, copies of what was seen kept encrypted, a conflict check before an engagement is taken on, engagement letters assembled from your own templates, time and fixed fees, invoices with VAT, aged debt and work in progress.
It is written for solicitors first, so its client account and limitation dates will matter less to an accounts practice than its time, billing and letters. One person to a copy.
OBSCURA PDF Studio
Scanned statements and receipts made searchable, a statement’s pages exported to Excel, and IBANs, card and National Insurance numbers found across one file or a batch and taken out of the file before a copy goes to a lender or a third party. A year-end pack can be signed with your own certificate.
A pattern misses a number written in an unusual way or split across two lines; read the list of matches before you redact.
OBSCURA Keep
Your own logins and two-step codes for HMRC, Companies House and the banks you sign in to, encrypted on your own device with Argon2id and AES-256-GCM, and your practising certificate and insurance with their renewal dates on one timeline.
Keep belongs to one person and syncs only through a folder of their own. There is no shared practice vault.
Where finance work goes wrong with files
Names in capitals are single tools: free to open and to check a file with, and Pro to save the result. A name marked Pro is a service inside the Sovereign Suite, which is Pro as a whole. Sheets, in the Workspace, is free.
Billing and getting paid
An invoicing service learns the client list, the rates and the monthly income of everyone who uses it.
- INVOICES: invoices drawn as PDFs on the device, with part payments, repeats and a CSV for the accountant; an invoicing tool, not accounting software
- QUOTE: a quote as a PDF, which becomes the invoice once accepted
- NETTERMS: how overdue an invoice is, and the reminder or demand that fits
- LEDGER: a cash book against real categories, with the summary an accountant works from
Receipts and expenses
Expense apps read receipts by uploading them. These are read where they are.
Reconciling and checking
A lookup formula finds the exact matches and silently drops the interesting ones.
- RECONCILE: two CSV lists matched in passes, hardest evidence first, with the near misses and one-against-several payments listed as exceptions
- DIGITS: leading digits, repeated amounts, round-number excess and bunching under an approval limit
- SAMPLE: a seeded sample anybody can reproduce: simple, systematic or stratified, with a written record
- STRUCTURING: runs of deposits across accounts that clear a reporting threshold with no single reportable one
- FIGURES: a column of numbers described honestly, and when the mean misleads
Read first: when Benford’s law works and why a lookup misses values that look the same.
VAT, and statements that arrive as PDFs
A bank that offers only a PDF statement, and a VAT question that needs an answer before the return.
- COLUMNS: the tables in a PDF statement turned into an .xlsx or a CSV, with numbers kept as numbers and account numbers kept as text
- VAT: UK VAT added to or taken off one amount or a list, rounded by HMRC’s rules, with the flat rate scheme
- THRESHOLD: turnover month by month against the registration threshold on a rolling twelve months, and the date to register by
- CHECKDIGIT: an IBAN, a card number or a UK VAT number checked by its own check digits before it goes on an invoice or a payment
Forecasts and the numbers behind a decision
The closing balance is not the number that matters.
- CASHFLOW: a 13-week forecast that finds the lowest balance and when it falls, and how much can go wrong before payroll is missed
- ASSETS: depreciation by four methods, with a reducing-balance rate solved to land on the residual
- RECUR: the five movements in recurring revenue, reconciled, with retention and payback
- LOAN: the schedule and the effective rate, with what a flat rate hides
- BREAKEVEN: break-even on a real sales mix, and which lever is worth pulling
Read first: the lowest cash balance in the month.
Spreadsheets that carry more than they show
A workbook sent to a client can hold a hidden sheet, a pivot cache of the source rows, or a link naming the file server.
- CLEANSHEET: removes hidden sheets, pivot caches, formulas, external links and comments from an .xlsx
- DATASCAN: finds the columns holding card numbers, IBANs, national identifiers and contact details
- SPLIT: dedupes, filters and splits a CSV into one file per value, and 007 stays 007
Read first: what a spreadsheet hides and whether it is safe to upload a bank statement.
Handing a client their accounts
The year-end pack is the most complete picture of a client’s finances there is, and it usually goes by email.
- Send a file securelyPro: files sealed into one page that opens with a passphrase sent another way
- STAPLE: merges the reports into one PDF and numbers the pages
- PADLOCK: an AES-256 password on the PDF
- PRESS: makes a PDF small enough to attach, with the text left as it is
- LOCKBOX: watermarked previews now, and the originals once the fee is paid and you send the key
Why it matters that the file stays on the machine
A bank statement shows who someone pays, who pays them, where they shop and when they are paid. Uploaded to a free converter or an expenses app, it sits on that company’s servers under terms the client never saw. Here the file is read from the disk and worked on in the browser tab, and nothing is uploaded.
An accountant’s duty of confidentiality covers a client’s papers wherever they are worked on. Every converter, expenses app or online ledger a statement passes through is one more organisation holding it, and one more the engagement letter does not mention. With these tools and applications, Books included, there is none: the client’s figures stay on the computer they were opened on, which you can confirm in the browser’s network tab or by the tests on the verification page.
The same is true of the tools that keep records. INVOICES, LEDGER and RECEIPTS keep theirs in the browser on the machine where they were made. That keeps them private, and it also means a record lives with the person who made it: there is no shared ledger for the team, and clearing the browser’s site data removes it, so save the CSV or JSON export each tool offers.
Nothing here is tax advice, and none of it files anything. The rates and rules written into a tool are there to show the working; the tax authority’s own figures are the ones to rely on.
A worked example: month end for a small client
A bookkeeper closes the month for a client with a shoebox of receipts. On one laptop:
- The client’s receipts arrive as phone photographs. RECEIPTS reads each into a line and keeps the SHA-256 of every image, and two faded ones are typed in by hand.
- The bank statement’s CSV and the client’s ledger go into RECONCILE. Most pair on a reference; the exceptions are one payment covering three invoices and one amount keyed wrongly.
- DIGITS runs over the expense column as a routine check for amounts bunched under the approval limit.
- CASHFLOW, starting from the reconciled balance, shows the lowest point falls in week nine, when the VAT quarter is due, not at the end of the thirteen weeks.
- STAPLE merges the reports into one PDF, and the pack goes to the client through Send a file securely.
What it costs a practice
Every tool above is free to open and to check a file with, so a practice can see what they do before paying anything. Saving the reconciliation report, the invoice PDF or the cleaned workbook is Pro.
- Free, for everyone
- The Workspace: Docs, Sheets, Slides, Notes, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Plan, Drive and the PDF editor, at work as well as at home. And every single tool on this page, to open a file and see what it finds, with no account.
- One application, for one person
- US$4 a month or US$35 a year, with 7 days free: Books on its own for the accounts, or Practice, PDF Studio or Keep, whichever the practice works in.
- Pro, for one person
- US$9 a month or US$79 a year, with 7 days free. Every application, and saving the result in every tool outside the Workspace.
- More than one person
- For now each person needs a plan of their own: a key is for one person, on every browser they use. Plans for a team or a business are not offered at the moment. A practice that already has one keeps it, and whoever holds its key goes on adding people and taking them off at /seats.
- Not included
- No admin console, single sign-on, audit log or shared team storage: each person’s work stays on their own machine. The page for teams lists the rest, with the answers a security reviewer will ask for.
Checkout is Stripe’s: the card is asked for at the start and not charged until the seven days are over, and if you cancel before then nothing is paid.
Questions
Is any of this accounting software?
Books is: double entry, bank statements by file, the VAT return worked out and the year end, for a sole trader, a landlord or a small company. It has no bank feeds and files nothing with HMRC. The single tools on this page are for the jobs around the accounts: invoicing, reading receipts, reconciling two lists, forecasting cash and handing files over.
What does RECONCILE read?
Two CSV files, one for each side, and you pick which column holds the reference and which the amount. Most banks and accounting systems can export one.
Where are invoices and ledgers kept?
In the browser on the machine where they were made, not on a server and not shared across the team. Each tool offers a CSV or JSON export; keep one somewhere that is backed up.
Are the tax rates in MILEAGE current?
They are written into the tool and shown beside the claim. Check them against HMRC, the IRS or the CRA for the year you are claiming, because rates change and the authority’s figure is the one that counts.
Can the whole practice use one subscription?
Not for now. Each person needs a plan of their own: a key is for one person, on every browser they use. A practice that already has a Team or Business plan keeps it and adds people at /seats.
Guides for this work
Questions this work runs into, each answered in full and ending at the tool that does the job.
- Is it safe to upload your bank statement?: It depends who is asking, and “use a secure connection” answers the wrong question.
- Is it safe to upload your payslip?: Everything written about payslips and privacy is about whether a company may email them to staff.
- Benford's law, and when it tells you nothing: The most misapplied result in auditing. Which columns the leading-digit test holds for, the five kinds it never will, the tests that need no assumption at all, and the threshold test that catches real splitting.
- Why VLOOKUP doesn't match values that look the same: A trailing space, a number stored as text, an en dash, a letter O for a zero: eight invisible differences, how to prove which one it is in two cells, and what to do when the formula is fine and the lists genuinely disagree.
- Why your CSV opens in one column: A CSV does not record its own separator, so Excel guesses from a Windows regional setting rather than from the file.
- Find the lowest cash balance in the month, not the closing one: It can end the month in credit and still fail in week seven. Run the balance forward a week at a time, take the smallest number, and then ask how late the receipts can be before it reaches zero.
- How much can you discount before you lose money?: Not the margin. A discount comes out of the contribution, so ten per cent off a forty per cent margin is a quarter of the profit on it and needs a third more units to stand still.
The same tools, for other work
This page describes what the tools do. It is not accounting, tax or legal advice.