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User Guide Chapter 1

1. Getting Started

This section walks you from a brand-new account to a live dashboard.

1.1 Create your account & sign in

  1. Go to the Open Mind Ledger sign-up page and create an account with your email and a password. You may be asked to complete a quick verification step before your first sign-in.

  2. After verifying, sign in with your email and password.

  3. The first screen you land on is your Dashboard (the Application → Dashboard item in the sidebar). From here you'll create or open a client Team.

If you were invited by an accountant, your account is already attached to a Team. After you accept the invitation email and set your password, signing in takes you straight to that client's dashboard in read-only mode. You can skip the rest of this section.

1.2 Understand the building blocks

Concept What it is
Team One client company. Holds one QuickBooks Online connection and all of that client's data.
Admin The accountant/owner of a Team. Connects QuickBooks, invites clients, manages settings.
Member A client invited to view their own Team. Read-only.
Module A feature area (CEO Dashboard, Tax Planning, Budgets, Consolidation, Advanced Forecasting). Access is controlled by your subscription.

1.3 Connect QuickBooks Online 👤 Admin

This is the most important setup step — almost every feature depends on it.

  1. Open the client Team you want to connect.
  2. In the sidebar, under Settings, click QBO Connection. - URL: /a/<team-slug>/qbo/status/
  3. Click Connect to QuickBooks. You'll be redirected to Intuit's secure sign-in.

  4. Sign in with the QuickBooks credentials for that client's company file and authorize Open Mind Ledger.

  5. Intuit sends you back to the Connection Status page. You should now see the company name and an Active connection.

Important rules

  • Each Team connects to one QuickBooks company. If a Team is already connected, you must disconnect first before connecting a different company.

  • The connection authorizes read access to the books for reporting. OML does not post transactions to your QuickBooks.

  • The connection token refreshes automatically. If it ever expires (e.g., you revoked access inside QuickBooks), the Connection Status page will prompt you to reconnect.

1.4 First data sync 👤 Admin

Once connected, OML pulls your QuickBooks data so the dashboards have something to show.

  • The first dashboard you open will load live figures from QuickBooks.

  • To refresh the internal reporting tables (used for some dashboards and exports), use the Refresh Internal Data button on the QBO Connection page.

  • A scheduled refresh also runs automatically each day, so your data stays current without manual effort.

Tip — give the first load a moment. The very first time you open a dashboard for a newly connected company, OML fetches several reports from Intuit. Subsequent loads are faster because results are cached.

1.5 Invite your client 👤 Admin

Give the business owner read-only access to their own dashboards.

  1. In the sidebar, under Settings, click Invite Client. - URL: /a/<team-slug>/qbo/invite-client/
  2. Enter the client's email address and send the invitation.
  3. The client receives an email, sets a password, and lands directly on their dashboard.
  4. The Invite Client page also lists pending invitations and current members, so you can see who has access at a glance.

Invitations are scoped to that one Team — inviting a client to one company does not give them access to your other clients.

1.6 What to do next