Financial reporting software, from the ledger up.

Financial reporting software turns accounting records into the reports people actually read: the profit and loss, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement, plus the ratios, trends and commentary that explain them. Some tools sit on a live accounting connection; LedgerIQ works from a general ledger export from Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage 50 or Pandle, or reads an IQ Books ledger live, and turns the result into a PDF board pack, or a composed report in PDF, PowerPoint, Word or Excel.

Broadly three. The statutory financial statements (profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow statement, statement of changes in equity and the notes) are prepared to an accounting standard and filed. Management reports are internal, as frequent as you like, and built for decisions: margins, cash, working capital, budget against actual. Board and lender reports package both with a narrative. LedgerIQ draws up the statements, runs the management analysis and writes the board pack from one general ledger.

Financial accounting is the recording: every transaction posted to the ledger under the double-entry rules. Financial reporting is what comes out of it: the statements and analysis presented to owners, boards, lenders and HMRC. LedgerIQ sits on the reporting side. It reads the ledger your accounting software keeps and reports on it; it does not post entries.

Most analysis still starts in a spreadsheet or the accounting software's own reports. Dedicated financial analysis software programs add the ratios, trends, forecasts and narrative a spreadsheet makes you build by hand each month; tools such as Fathom and Syft do this from a live accounting connection. LedgerIQ does it from the transaction-level general ledger export: 44 modules, a financial dashboard and a written board pack. See the Fathom alternatives comparison for how the options differ.

Yes, and many models live there. The hard part is feeding them: rebuilding the profit and loss and balance sheet from a ledger export every month. LedgerIQ does that part. Any report you compose exports as an Excel workbook, with a sheet for each section; modules such as the cash flow forecast also have their own Excel download, and every chart's data downloads as CSV, so your own model can start from figures that already tie to the books.

The one that reports on the books you already keep without a rebuild. For a small business that usually means three things: it reads your accounting system's data without an expensive integration, it explains the figures in plain English, and it costs per use rather than per company per month. LedgerIQ reads a general ledger export from Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage 50 or Pandle, explains every module, and charges 1,000 credits a full analysis, with a free tier that covers the first one.

Yes: a summary sheet of key figures with charts fed from the ledger, refreshed each month by pasting in a new export. It works until the chart of accounts changes or someone asks a question the sheet was not built for. LedgerIQ's financial dashboard is built from the same export with nothing to maintain, and its chart data downloads as CSV if you still want the figures in Excel.

It is replacing the slow parts: assembling the figures, calculating the ratios and drafting the first commentary. The judgement is still a person's. In LedgerIQ the numbers are calculated from the ledger by the modules, not by a language model, and RiQ writes its explanation on top of those calculated figures, so an analyst spends the time on what the numbers mean.

A financial dashboard puts a business's key figures on one screen, so you can see how it is doing without opening every report. LedgerIQ's overview dashboard shows revenue, net profit and a performance score, then profitability, liquidity, growth and cost discipline, each with its trend, and opens into the module behind any figure. It is built from the general ledger, so every number ties back to transactions.

Use three methods together. Horizontal analysis compares each line with earlier periods to show growth and drift. Vertical analysis expresses each line as a percentage of a base, revenue for the profit and loss and total assets for the balance sheet, so businesses of different sizes compare. Ratio analysis relates lines to each other: liquidity, gearing, returns, margins and efficiency. LedgerIQ runs all three from one general ledger: period comparisons and trends, common-size statements, and the ratio modules.

Vertical analysis states every line as a percentage of one total in the same statement: each profit and loss line as a share of revenue, each balance sheet line as a share of total assets. It shows the shape of a business at a glance, for example that cost of sales takes half of revenue, and lets you compare a year with the last, or one company with another of a different size. LedgerIQ's common-size profit and loss and common-size balance sheet are vertical analysis, calculated for you.

The general ledger, at transaction level. A trial balance is a set of closing balances: it can produce a balance sheet but it cannot show seasonality, expense correlation, anomalies or which entries make up a figure. LedgerIQ builds the trial balance itself from the ledger, then runs every module on the transactions underneath.

Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage 50 and Pandle, from a general ledger export (also called the nominal ledger, account transactions or GL detail) as CSV or Excel. LedgerIQ recognises each by its layout and asks a few questions about how ambiguous accounts are classified. Exports from other systems are not yet recognised. An IQ Books ledger is read live, with no export. It works from the export rather than a live connection, so there is nothing to authorise and it runs on a client you have not onboarded.

No. LedgerIQ analyses one ledger at a time, so it is not consolidated financial reporting software. Run each company's ledger separately; it does not eliminate intercompany balances or combine entities.

The report you compose from any module's charts, tables and commentary, in your own branding, exports as a PDF, a PowerPoint deck, a Word document, an Excel workbook with a sheet for each section, or a CSV, or goes out as a web link or on a schedule. There is also a PDF board pack from the dashboard, Excel downloads inside modules such as the cash flow forecast, and any chart as a PNG or SVG image or its data as CSV.

A full analysis is 1,000 credits, and reopening the same period in the same session is free. The free tier is permanent, with 1,000 one-off credits and no card, which covers one full analysis. Starter, at £5 a month, adds 5,000 credits a month, enough for five. See pricing.

The ledger file is read and analysed in your browser. Detailed transaction data is not kept beyond the session unless you save a snapshot. Reports you choose to render as PDF or PowerPoint, schedule or share are sent to our servers to build and deliver them, encrypted with AES-256, and when you ask RiQ, or it writes a narrative or checks an account classification, the figures and account names it needs are sent too.