Frequently Asked Questions

Poof is a platform to run a small business, with the books at the center. Connect your bank and card accounts and the AI reads the feeds, matches invoices to deposits and bills to payments, categorizes, and drafts the month-end close. Every entry it proposes waits on a card with the evidence it found, and nothing reaches the books until a person approves it or a rule that person granted covers it. It also invoices, takes payments, budgets, forecasts cash, and for trade shops answers the phone and lets a technician close a job from a text. One plan, every feature, $79 a month, and a close within five business days or the next month is free.

Poof generates 13 financial reports: Income Statement (P&L), Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement, Trial Balance, General Ledger, Account Detail, AR Aging, AP Aging, Customer Sales, Vendor Expenses, Sales by Product/Service, Expenses by Category, and Budget vs Actual. You can toggle between accrual and cash basis, select custom date ranges, and export to PDF or Excel.

Yes. Poof supports team management with role-based access control. You can invite your accountant or bookkeeper with a specific role (Owner, Admin, Accountant, Bookkeeper, or Viewer) so they can review your books, run reports, and make adjustments as needed — with 26 granular permissions to control exactly what they can access.

Bookkeeping is the day-to-day recording of financial transactions — categorizing expenses, reconciling bank statements, and maintaining accurate records. Accounting is the higher-level analysis, reporting, and tax preparation based on those records. Poof automates the bookkeeping so you or your accountant can focus on the accounting.

For freelancers, the best bookkeeping app is one that automates the tedious work and doesn't require accounting knowledge. Poof is built specifically for solo founders and freelancers — AI categorizes your transactions automatically, sends recurring invoices on autopilot, scans receipts from your phone, and generates 13 financial reports including P&L and cash flow statements. It's $79/mo with everything included (no tiers) — while QuickBooks locks project profitability, budgets, and comprehensive reporting behind its $140/mo Plus plan.

Yes. Many small business owners handle their own bookkeeping using AI-powered tools like Poof. The AI categorizes transactions, reconciles your bank accounts, generates financial reports, and even creates budgets — tasks that traditionally required a bookkeeper. You don't need accounting knowledge because Poof uses plain language, not accounting jargon. For year-end taxes or complex accounting questions, you can invite your accountant into Poof with role-based access so they can review your books and make adjustments.

A bookkeeper is a person who manually categorizes transactions, reconciles accounts, and prepares financial reports — typically costing $500-$2,000/month. Bookkeeping software automates those same tasks using AI. With Poof, the AI categorizes your transactions, reconciles your bank accounts, scans receipts, generates 13 financial reports, and even creates budgets from plain-English goals. You still review and approve the work, but the manual data entry is eliminated. Most small businesses save 5-10 hours per week by switching from a manual bookkeeper to AI-powered software like Poof.

Yes. Poof is designed for all types of small businesses. The AI generates a customized chart of accounts based on your specific business type and industry — whether you run a restaurant, ecommerce store, contracting business, or freelance practice. Poof's BRAID engine learns your unique transaction patterns over time, so it gets smarter about categorizing expenses specific to your industry. Features like receipt scanning, mileage tracking, recurring invoices, and expense categorization are especially valuable for service-based businesses, while inventory-related categorization and sales tracking help retail and ecommerce owners.

Poof keeps your books organized and tax-ready throughout the year, so you're not scrambling at tax time. It automatically categorizes deductible expenses, tracks mileage, generates P&L and Balance Sheet reports that your accountant needs for tax preparation, and maintains a complete audit trail of every transaction. While Poof doesn't file taxes directly, it produces the accurate financial records your CPA or tax preparer requires. You can invite your accountant into Poof with role-based access so they can pull reports, review categorizations, and make adjustments before filing.

Poof is a web-based application that works on any device with a modern browser — desktop, tablet, or phone. The interface is fully responsive, so you can review transactions, send invoices, scan receipts, chat with the AI assistant, and check your dashboard from your phone. Upload receipt photos directly from your mobile camera for instant OCR scanning and categorization. No app download required — just log in at app.poofai.com from any browser.

No. Every write an AI proposes stages as a card in your approvals inbox and waits — the nightly categorization sweep, a request you typed into chat, a detector that noticed a job losing money. Nothing reaches your books until a person approves it, and approving runs exactly what is on the card rather than a fresh interpretation of it. Each card also shows the evidence behind it: the customer it resolved, the prior transactions for that merchant and whether they were all categorized the same way, the amount, the account. That evidence is gathered by code, never judged by the model — a card that says “no history for this merchant” is telling you why it is asking.

QuickBooks bank rules auto-post: you write one from a blank form, guess at the conditions, and it applies from then on — so a QuickBooks rule that is wrong keeps being wrong until somebody notices. Poof derives a rule from work you just reviewed instead of a form, shows it to you in plain sentences with your own 30-day record before you grant it, and then adds four things a bank rule does not have: a mandatory dollar ceiling separate from the match (a rule without one does not run), a daily cap whose overflow goes to your inbox rather than being dropped, a requirement that prior human decisions agreed, and self-pausing — correct anything the rule is about — not only the rows it touched — and it stops, tells you which correction stopped it, and waits for you to resume or revoke it.

No. Autonomy is off until you grant it, one rule at a time. There is no default and no global “let the AI run” switch — a new account asks about everything until its owner decides otherwise. No ledger rule can ever send anything to a customer: invoices and credit notes are always a human's decision, whatever a rule says. The phone is a separate channel a shop opts into: the receptionist talks to callers and books jobs inside rules written in code, and nothing granted in the books can reach it. Rules cannot be created from a settings screen either, only from work someone actually reviewed. Every rule lives on one page showing what it has handled and who granted it, revoking is instant, and “what did AI change this month, and who allowed it” is a single page for your accountant.

Poof uses the BRAID engine to analyze your bank transactions and automatically assign them to the correct categories in your chart of accounts. The AI learns your business patterns over time, improving accuracy with every correction you make. It also detects recurring charges and matches transactions to invoices and bills automatically.

Yes. Create budgets manually or describe your goal in plain English (e.g., '20% revenue growth') and AI builds the budget for you. Poof includes a variance dashboard with budget vs actual comparison, 12-month AI-generated cash flow forecasting with confidence bands, and proactive budget alerts when you're approaching spending thresholds.

AI bookkeeping uses artificial intelligence to automate routine bookkeeping tasks like categorizing transactions, scanning receipts, matching payments to invoices, generating budgets, forecasting cash flow, and creating financial reports. Instead of manually entering data, AI learns your business patterns and handles the work automatically — saving small business owners hours every week.

Yes. Poof generates AI-powered 12-month cash flow projections with confidence bands, seasonal adjustments, and rolling forecast refresh. See where your cash is headed and make informed decisions about spending, hiring, and growth.

Yes. AI bookkeeping tools like Poof can handle most of your day-to-day bookkeeping automatically — categorizing transactions, reconciling bank accounts, scanning receipts, matching payments to invoices, generating financial reports, and even creating budgets from plain-English goals. You still review and approve the work, but AI eliminates 90% of the manual data entry. For tax filing and complex accounting decisions, you can invite your accountant to collaborate inside Poof.

Yes. Poof includes full invoicing with PDF generation, email delivery, custom branding, payment tracking, credit notes, and a products/services catalog. You can start with an estimate or quote, convert it to an invoice when your client approves, and set up recurring invoices on weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly schedules with automated follow-up reminders for overdue payments.

Yes. Set up recurring invoices on weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly schedules. Poof auto-generates and auto-sends invoices on schedule, and includes automated follow-up reminders at due date, 3, 7, 14, and 30 days past due — with smart pause when payment is received.

Yes. Create professional estimates, send them to clients, and track status — Draft, Sent, Approved, Declined, or Converted. When approved, convert to an invoice with one click. The full workflow — Estimate → Approval → Invoice → Payment — is built in.

Mercury Books is bookkeeping built into a Mercury bank account, free for Mercury customers through the end of 2026 and $35 a month after. Poof works with any bank and card through Plaid, without moving your banking, and it is built around review: every entry the AI proposes waits on a card with its evidence, and nothing posts until a person approves it or a rule that person granted covers it. If you bank with Mercury and want your books to stay inside the bank, Mercury is the simpler choice. If you want books you can defend, with a close that ticks itself off a checklist and a rule that stops itself when it is wrong, that is Poof.

Your books closed within five business days of month end, or the next month is free. It starts with your first close after a complete calendar month with your feeds connected; the partial month you joined in is not covered, and historical cleanup or a migration is scoped separately. A close is ready when feeds are reviewed, the bank reconciles to one figure, and every card in Approvals is decided. Cards left waiting past day five pause the clock. The remedy is the next month free on your subscription.

Poof is built specifically for small businesses that want AI-powered automation without complexity. Its built-in AI assistant has 85 tools: it prepares records, updates invoices, generates all 13 reports, and imports bank statement PDFs, all through conversation, and every change it proposes waits on a card with its evidence until you approve it. Poof also offers AI-built budgets, a 12-month cash flow forecast, auto-reconciliation, recurring charge detection, job costing, and a month-end close the books tick off themselves. Poof is one plan at $79/month with all 172 features included ($39.50/month for your first 3 paid months, after a 30-day free trial). The fair QuickBooks comparison is Plus at $140/month, the tier that carries job costing, budgets, and full reporting, not Simple Start at $38/month, which is single-user and can't do this work.

No. QuickBooks is the default choice, but it's not the only option — and it's often more complex and expensive than small businesses need. QuickBooks starts at $38/mo with tiered pricing that locks features behind its $85/mo Essentials and $140/mo Plus plans (Intuit raised prices on August 1, 2026). Alternatives like Poof offer AI-powered automation (transaction categorization, receipt scanning, recurring charge detection, budgeting) at $79/mo with every feature included in one plan. If you've tried QuickBooks and found it overwhelming, Poof is designed to be simpler.

If price alone is the criterion, Wave has a free plan. But the honest comparison is feature-for-feature. As of August 2026, QuickBooks charges $38/mo for Simple Start, $85/mo for Essentials, $140/mo for Plus, and $340/mo for Advanced — and Plus is the tier you need for project profitability and budgets. Poof is $79/mo for all 172 features in one plan — 44% less than Plus — including what QuickBooks reserves for its upper tiers, plus AI-powered budgeting, cash flow forecasting, auto-reconciliation, and a built-in AI assistant that QuickBooks doesn't offer at any tier. There's also a 30-day free trial with no credit card required, and then a 50% launch discount: $39.50/mo for the first 3 paid months.

Traditional bookkeeping costs vary widely: hiring a part-time bookkeeper typically runs $500-$2,000/month, while a full-time in-house bookkeeper can cost $3,000-$5,000/month plus benefits. Outsourced bookkeeping firms charge $200-$500/month for basic services. AI-powered bookkeeping software like Poof costs $79/month (or $39.50/month with the launch discount) and handles most of the work automatically — transaction categorization, bank reconciliation, invoicing, receipt scanning, and financial reporting. For most small businesses, Poof replaces the need for a dedicated bookkeeper at a fraction of the cost.

Poof offers a 30-day free trial with full access to all 172 features — no credit card required to start. When your trial ends, your first three paid months are 50% off at $39.50/month, then $79/month. If you choose not to subscribe, your data remains accessible in read-only mode so you can export your records. There are no long-term contracts — you can cancel anytime and your data stays yours.

AI bookkeeping saves money in three ways: it eliminates the cost of a dedicated bookkeeper ($500-$2,000/month), it reduces errors that lead to costly tax mistakes or missed deductions, and it frees up your time to focus on revenue-generating activities. Poof automates transaction categorization, bank reconciliation, receipt scanning, invoice follow-ups, and report generation — tasks that would take a bookkeeper hours each week. At $79/month, Poof replaces thousands of dollars in annual bookkeeping costs while delivering faster, more consistent results.

Yes. All data is encrypted in transit via HTTPS/TLS. Poof includes two-factor authentication (TOTP-based MFA with backup codes), role-based access controls with 5 roles and 26 granular permissions, audit logging with PII masking, session management, and email verification. Bank connections are read-only through Plaid — Poof never stores your bank login credentials or has the ability to move money.

Yes. Poof takes data security seriously. All data is encrypted in transit via HTTPS/TLS, and bank connections go through Plaid with read-only access — Poof never sees or stores your bank login credentials and cannot move money. Poof includes two-factor authentication, role-based access controls with 26 granular permissions, audit logging with PII masking, and session management. Your financial data is never shared with third parties or used to train AI models. You can manage active sessions, revoke access, and export your data at any time.

Yes. Poof connects to over 12,000 financial institutions in the US via Plaid, syncing the last 30 days of transactions. For older transactions, you can upload CSV or PDF bank statements. You can manage multiple bank accounts and credit cards from one dashboard.

To automate your bookkeeping: (1) Connect your bank accounts so transactions sync automatically, (2) Use AI-powered software like Poof to categorize transactions, detect recurring charges, and match payments to invoices, (3) Set up recurring invoices so billing happens on autopilot, (4) Upload receipts for automatic OCR scanning instead of manual data entry, and (5) Use AI-generated budgets and cash flow forecasts to stay on top of your finances. With Poof, most businesses go from hours of manual bookkeeping to minutes of reviewing AI-categorized transactions.

Yes. Poof makes it easy to switch from QuickBooks. You can import your existing chart of accounts, customer and vendor lists, and historical transactions via CSV or Excel files. Poof's AI-guided onboarding walks you through the setup process, analyzes your uploaded documents, generates your chart of accounts, and calculates opening balances. Most businesses complete the migration in under an hour. You can also upload PDF bank statements and let the AI parse them directly in chat.

Yes. Poof supports importing financial data from QuickBooks and other bookkeeping platforms via CSV, Excel, and PDF files. Export your chart of accounts, transactions, customer lists, and vendor lists from QuickBooks, then upload them into Poof. The AI-guided onboarding process helps you map your existing accounts and calculates opening balances automatically. For bank statements in PDF format, you can upload them directly into the AI chat and Poof will parse and import the transactions for you.