Getting Started is the practical, follow-along path for setting up your business — not a replacement for the rest of this Help panel. For how Sales, Expenses, and the rest connect, see the User Guide's How Clarity Works section; for a specific task, use one of the tabs above instead.

First login

A welcome screen offers a choice: explore a sample business, start from scratch, upload an existing Margini file, import from your POS or QuickBooks, or upload any spreadsheet. Not sure? “Explore the sample business” is the fastest way to see what the app can do before entering anything real — and it’s risk-free: if you already had real data entered, it’s tucked away while you look, not erased, see below.

Already clicked around?

If you explored the sample business, your own data (if you’d entered any) was safely parked, not erased. A “↵ Return to my data” button appears in place of the “↻ Change Starting Data” button under Overview's “What to Do Next” (Other things you can do), and in Manage Data, click it any time to bring your numbers back exactly as they were. Ready to keep the sample data instead, or start fresh? Any other choice from the ↻ chooser below asks you to confirm first whenever it would discard real work with one click, whether that’s your own entered data or data still parked from an earlier sample preview. Just opened the chooser to look and don’t want to pick anything? Close it with the × in its top-right corner, nothing changes until you actually choose.

What order to enter things in

Follow the Setup progress card above: Revenue, then Expenses, then Fixed costs, then Inventory, then Pricing. Each gold bar is a step you’ve completed; once all five are done, the card disappears on its own with a one-time “✓ Setup complete” message.

What the interactive guide covers

Business details, then Products/Services (or Rooms/Clients, depending on your business type), Recurring Revenue where it applies, Fixed Costs, Employees, and an optional Budget target — each step only shown if it's actually relevant to your business, skippable where it isn't. Once setup is done, it walks you into recording your first Sales, Receivables, and Expenses, and reading Cash Flow, Financial Health, and your CFO Brief.

Business types, modules, multiple businesses, and your team — the settings that shape how Clarity fits your business. For importing data, see Import & Connect; for backup and sync, see Data & Recovery.

Finding your way around

The sidebar is grouped by question, not by module name: Overview and More Numbers at the top (Overview is your everyday home screen; More Numbers holds extra detail — gross margin, processing fees, and similar — one click deeper), then Money (Enter Numbers, Sales Log, Who Owes Me, Expense Log, Fixed Costs, Cash Flow, Sales Channels), Profitability (Pricing), Plan (Budget, Scenarios, Tax Reserve, Money Routine), Business Setup (Inventory, Rooms/Clients, People & Payroll, Growth KPIs — the setup/configuration screens for your business type, not part of the daily money-in/money-out routine), Reports, and Manage (Settings, Manage Data) below — Money, Profitability, and Plan open by default since they're where you work day to day; Business Setup, Reports, and Manage start collapsed, tap the heading to expand. A tab appears the moment its module is switched on under ⚙ Settings → Modules and disappears the moment it's off. ⚙ Settings itself opens as a small floating panel by the gear icon, not a full-width bar.

Changing business type, settings, or currency

Settings → Business lets you change business type any time without losing data — it relabels the app and may show or hide a tab or two (Rooms, Clients), but nothing is deleted; data tied to a feature that no longer applies goes dormant and comes back if you switch again. The same ⚙ Settings panel (gear icon, top-right of the header) covers business name, tax rate, reporting period, and currency (USD, GBP, EUR, NGN, INR, CAD, AUD, ZAR, or JPY — updates instantly). Use the dropdown inside it to switch between Business, Financial Preferences, Modules, Data Center, Account, Members, Activity & Audit History, Integrations, and Billing.

Quick reference

Business types

You picked one on the welcome screen (or it defaults to General). It changes what a few screens track, not the underlying math, and you can switch it later without losing data.

• General business. Retail, market stalls, food businesses. Sales Log, Pricing and Inventory work as described in Navigation.
• Rental properties. Adds a Rooms tab: each room tracks monthly rent and cost, and a tenancy history (move-in and move-out dates) rather than a single "occupied" flag, so past months stay accurate even after someone moves out. "Generate this month's rent" fills in rent rows for every currently-occupied room in one click. Room profit is labeled "before shared costs," it's direct cost only, not an allocation of the whole property's overhead.
• Services. For consulting, tutoring, and similar. Services, rentals and home care are treated as having no cost of goods unless you tell Clarity otherwise, so nothing is flagged as missing and your margin is stated. If you do pay for materials or subcontractors, enter a monthly figure in Fixed Costs, or log those payments under the main cost category in Expense Log, and Clarity uses them.
• Home care. Adds a Clients tab, lighter than Rooms, no recurring rent, just who you're billing. Sales Log rows can be tagged to a client to see revenue per client.

Further modules you can turn on

Open ⚙ Settings (Manage group in the sidebar) → Modules to switch any of these on. All ship off until you turn them on; start with what's relevant to your business, not everything at once.

Multiple businesses

The business switcher at the top of the sidebar (your business name and a ▾) isn’t just a label — click it to see every business on this device, switch between them, or + Add Business to start a new one from scratch. Each business keeps its own sales, expenses, modules, and settings; switching never mixes one business’s numbers into another’s. A business created before you signed in (or on a device that was offline) shows “Connect to your account” in the switcher — tap it once to link that business to your Clarity account so it shows up wherever you sign in. Not connecting it yet doesn’t lose anything; the business stays fully usable on this device either way. “Archive this business” in the same menu tucks a business away without deleting it — find it again under “Show archived.” To remove a business for good, open the same menu and choose “Delete this business…”: only the owner can do this, you have to type the business’s exact name to confirm, and it deletes the business and all its records from your account and every device, so download a backup first (Manage → Back up your data). A business on a paid plan has to have its plan cancelled first.

Team members & roles

Under ⚙ Settings → Members, invite someone by email to help run the business with you — they need a Clarity account already (ask them to sign up first if an invite comes back “no account found”). Every invitation gets one of four roles, each opening up more than the last:

Leaving a business. If you were invited to someone else’s business and no longer need it, open Settings → Members and click Leave this business on your own row. You lose access right away, it is removed from this device, and the business and its records stay with the other members. To get back in, the owner has to invite you again. The owner can’t leave (transfer ownership first, or delete the business), and access given to Margini support is ended by the owner in the Support access card.

The person who created the business is its Owner — not an invitable role, and the only membership that can never be removed. Only Owner and Admin can invite or remove people; everyone else sees the member list read-only. Changing a role: Owner and Admin can change an existing member’s role at any time from a dropdown right on their row, no need to remove and re-invite someone just to change what they can do. Removing someone (“Remove” next to their name, or “Cancel” on a pending invite) revokes their access immediately; it doesn’t touch anything they already entered, though their own device may keep some of this business’s information until they sign out there.

Transferring ownership. The Owner (and only the Owner) can hand the business to another member under ⚙ Settings → Members → Transfer ownership. Pick the member, and Clarity shows what will change before anything happens. Your business data, settings, invoices, financial history and the business’s own subscription stay with the business. Choose what happens to your own access afterward from a dropdown: stay on as Read-only (the recommended default; you can look but not change anything, and a read-only member cannot manage billing), stay on as Manager, Bookkeeper or Admin (Admin keeps billing access), or leave the business entirely. If the business only had its plan through you (for example it was on your other Business plan), it follows the new owner’s plan, and keeps its current plan for 30 days first. If the new owner is already at their plan’s limit on the number of businesses, the transfer can’t go ahead until they upgrade or remove one.

Margini support access. If you are the Owner and want help from our team, Settings → Members has a Margini support access section below Transfer ownership. Choose 1, 3, 7 or 14 days and confirm, and Margini support gets temporary Admin access so we can look at what you see and fix things quickly. Billing and invoicing are off by default: a separate checkbox lets support also change your subscription, open the billing portal, connect payment tools and send invoices to your customers, so leave it off unless support needs it. Access ends on its own, you can turn it off at any time with Turn off support access now, and everything support does is recorded in Activity & Audit History. Support access does not count toward your plan’s member limit.

Advisor View, for accountants and bookkeepers

If you’re a member of more than one business in Clarity — several client businesses as a bookkeeper or accountant, or simply more than one business you run yourself — the Advisor View shows all of them in one place: a health status for each, revenue/margin/labor trends, and notes/actions per client, instead of switching between them one at a time. The portfolio table shows each client’s revenue and net profit for the last 30 days, the cash balance they last entered, what they are still owed (and how much is overdue) and an Attention status, with a firm filter, sortable columns and a CSV download. Sign in with the same email you already use for Clarity; there’s no separate account to create. A client can share their exact numbers with you (instead of an estimate) by running Sync Settings once on their own device.

Advisors & accounting firms

If you own a business and work with an accountant or advisor. Under ⚙ Settings → Advisors you can see which firms have access to your business and give a new one access. Ask your advisor for their firm code, enter it, and choose an access level (View only, Manager, Bookkeeper, or Full access). The firm then has to accept before it can see anything. You stay the owner the whole time: a firm never owns your business or your records. Remove access next to a firm ends it immediately; your business, its history and your own access are not touched. You can also still invite an individual advisor by email under Members, as before.

If your advisor creates your business for you. You will get an email saying the firm invited you to use ClarityApp. When you sign in, an invitation appears in the sidebar showing the firm’s name. Nothing is created or shared until you press Accept. Then your business is set up under your own account, you are the owner, and the firm can see and work with it at the level they were given. Press Decline and no business is created and the firm never gets access. When a firm has access, the sidebar shows “Your advisor” with its name.

If you are an advisor. Advisor firms are set up by Margini on request (email hello@marginifinancial.com). Read the Advisor Firm Agreement any time, including from the sign-in page. Once your firm exists, a My Clients entry appears under Manage. The first time a firm administrator opens it, they read and accept the agreement, and the firm cannot add clients until they do. There you can:

Firm staff can work with a client’s numbers but cannot invite or remove people from the client’s business or change its roles, and they do not use up the client’s member seats. Using ClarityApp does not make the firm responsible for the client’s books and does not create a professional relationship by itself; that is between the firm and its client.

Activity & Audit History

Under ⚙ Settings → Activity & Audit History, see a running log of what's changed on this business and who changed it — every sale, expense, receivable, payroll entry, and import, logged the moment it happens. Filter by category (Sales, Expenses, Receivables, Payroll, Imports, Other) or, once there's more than one active member, by person. Tap any entry to see its detail, including what an edit changed from and to.

This exists for accountability once more than one person can touch a business's numbers — it answers “who logged this?” or “who corrected that?” without having to ask. It's read-only: nothing here can be edited or deleted, and it doesn't affect your actual sales, expenses, or any other figure. Requires signing in (see Data & Recovery); it isn't available on a purely local, signed-out business.

Billing & plan

Under ⚙ Settings → Billing, Owner and Admin can see the business's current plan and change it — choosing a plan and billing interval (monthly or annual) opens a secure Stripe Checkout page to complete the upgrade, and an active paid plan gets a Manage billing button that opens Stripe's own billing portal to update the card on file, view invoices, or cancel. Other roles can see the current plan but can't change it. A plan change can take a few seconds to take effect after checkout while Clarity confirms it with Stripe; the page will say so rather than leaving you guessing.

If your advisor provides your plan. Settings → Billing then says “Your ClarityApp access is provided by” your advisor’s name, and you do not enter payment details. If they stop covering you, you keep Pro for 30 days and Billing shows the end date and a Continue with your own subscription option. Choosing it keeps the same business and all your records; only the billing changes, and your advisor stops being billed for you. Your advisor’s billing account is never shown to you.

People & Payroll (Wages & Owner Pay)

Always on — who works for you (including yourself, as an Owner) and what labour costs, no tax withholding, benefits, or time clock, just wages recorded correctly and once. Add a person, log hours and rate each pay period, then click Mark paid: that's the one step that writes the Wages expense, you never re-type it in Expense Log or in Fixed Costs. The Wages & Owner Pay figure on the Fixed Costs tab is read-only for this reason — it's the total of everyone's pay, always kept in sync automatically, so it can never be entered twice.

Each person also gets a cost treatment: Overhead (supports the business generally), Direct labor (directly delivers what you sell), or Mixed (a percentage split you set, e.g. 60% direct / 40% overhead). This only changes how Pricing treats that person's pay when working out overhead — their full wage always counts in your financial results either way, so nothing about your actual Revenue, Net Profit, or Cash Flow changes based on this choice. If you had Wages or Owner Pay entered in Fixed Costs before this existed, Clarity offers a one-time move into People & Payroll that preserves your existing total exactly — nothing is deleted or reinterpreted, and declining just asks again next time rather than losing the figure.

To see one person's history, pick them in the selector at the top of Payroll History; it also shows their paid and not-yet-paid totals. Made a mistake in an entry? From Payroll History, Edit lets Owner, Admin, or Bookkeeper roles correct that entry's hours or rate inline — if it's already paid, its mirrored Wages expense updates automatically to match, so the two figures never drift apart. Delete removes the entry entirely and is restricted to Owner or Admin, a stricter check than Edit, since deleting is never the right way to fix a mistake — use Edit for that. If a deleted entry was already paid, its mirrored Wages expense is removed with it, so nothing is left behind pointing at an entry that no longer exists.

Discounts & complimentary services

Built into Sales Log, no separate module. Price the item on Pricing first, then in Sales Log or Enter Numbers select it and enter a Discount % — Final Price calculates live (Standard Price × (1 − Discount %) × Units). A complimentary sale is just Discount % = 100, not a separate "free" product: that keeps what was actually delivered accurate, for any business type. A discounted or comp sale shows a small tag ("15% OFF" or "COMP") in Sales Log so it's never mistaken for a mistake later.

Recurring Revenue (Services & Home Care)

For a client who pays you on a repeating schedule — a monthly retainer, a weekly session, an ongoing care plan. Set it up once from Clients → Recurring Revenue: choose the client, the amount, and whether it repeats weekly, every 2 weeks (biweekly), or monthly. Setting up a schedule doesn't record any revenue by itself, it's an expectation, not a transaction — Clarity tracks it in Who Owes Me automatically as each payment comes due. Click Mark Paid when the money actually arrives; that's the one step that writes the Sales Log entry, you never re-enter it by hand. If you already recorded that payment the normal way through Sales Log first, Mark Paid recognizes it and asks whether to use that existing entry instead of creating a second one — nothing is ever silently duplicated. Pausing or removing a schedule only stops future payments from being expected; anything already recorded stays exactly as it is.

A schedule can carry a standing discount %, for a client who always pays a reduced rate. It works the same way a Sales Log discount does — the amount you enter is the full rate, Clarity shows what actually gets billed after the discount, and the resulting Sales Log entry carries the discount just like a manual one, so it's counted correctly everywhere discounts are reported (More Numbers, Discounts Given, Business Summary Report). Changing a schedule's discount only affects occurrences generated from that point on; anything already billed keeps the rate it was actually billed at.

The Recurring Revenue panel itself collapses once you have no active schedules (or stays expanded if you do), and always shows how many are active and overdue even while collapsed. A search box inside it filters by client name, description, amount, or frequency — useful once you have more than a handful of schedules.

Where your data lives

Signing in uses your email and a one-time link; that, plus basic account details (when you signed up, your business name and type), is stored with our identity provider so we can recognize you — that's identity data, not your business's numbers. If you use Multiple businesses or Team members (see Module Guides), the business names, who’s a member, and each person's role are stored with us too — that's what lets a business and its team show up correctly wherever a member signs in.

What happens to what you actually enter — sales, expenses, products, fixed costs, people, payroll — depends on your plan. On Free, it stays in your browser on this device; none of it is sent to or stored on a Margini server by default, and nobody at Margini Labs, LLC can see your day-to-day numbers unless you choose to share a Backup file or your screen with us directly. On Pro and Business (and some early-access Free accounts), it's synced to our cloud database instead, so a sale logged on your laptop shows up on your phone, or on a bookkeeper's device, automatically — access is limited to the people you've actively added as members of your business, plus Margini support only while the Owner has support access turned on.

Settings and lists follow you too. On plans with cloud sync, it is not only your entries that sync. Your business setup does as well: fixed costs and their history, budget and tax settings, which modules are switched on, clients (including any email addresses you saved for invoices), products and pricing, rooms and tenants, business units, and the manual adjustments you make on Cash Flow. A second device or a teammate who opens the business sees the same setup instead of a blank one. If two people change the same list at the same time, Clarity keeps both people's changes where it safely can, for example two different clients added at once, and only asks you to choose when both of you changed the very same item. Your What-if scenarios and break-even weeks are private: they follow you across your own devices and nobody else in the business can see them. The business's name and type are not part of this. On Free, all of this stays on this device.

If your plan doesn't include cloud sync, your day-to-day entries don't yet follow you between devices or browsers automatically — a sale logged on your laptop doesn't appear on your phone by itself. Use ↓ Backup / Cloud backup and restore on the other device (see below) to bring your numbers along, or simply keep entering on the one device you use for this business.

Cloud backup is available on every plan, separate from sync: turn it on and your financial data is encrypted in your browser with a passphrase only you know before anything uploads — we store the encrypted result, not your numbers, and can't read it or recover it if that passphrase is lost. Off by default; it's a recovery safety net whether or not your plan includes cloud sync.

Account access and recovery

Signing in is passwordless: whoever can click the link sent to your registered email is you, as far as the app is concerned. That's convenient, but it means losing access to that email address means losing access to your account — there's no password to reset instead.

• Before you lose access: if you know you're about to change email providers or close an old inbox, update your sign-in email first. Settings → Account → “Change sign-in email” sends a confirmation link to the new address (and possibly your current one too, some projects require both); nothing changes until you confirm, and your business data and session stay exactly as they are throughout.
• Add a recovery contact: Settings → Account → “Account Recovery Contact” is an optional email or phone number our support team can use to help verify it's really you if you ever need manual recovery. It's never used for anything automated — no texts, no emails sent to it — it's just there for a human to reach you if needed.
• If you've already lost access: email hello@marginifinancial.com from any address explaining what happened. We verify manually before making any change — be ready to describe your business name, roughly when you signed up, and something about your recent data (a recent sale, a product you've priced, anything only the real account holder would know). We will never ask for a government ID for this.

Backup and re-importing

• Your work auto-saves to this browser as you go, no save button needed.
• ↓ Backup downloads a full Excel copy, one tab per section, including currency, target margin, and which modules you've switched on, not just your figures.
• Save that file into a cloud-synced folder (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox) so a lost or wiped computer doesn't mean lost data. On Chrome or Edge, Manage Data → “Your data is yours” can automate this to a folder you choose.
• Restore on another device: open ClarityApp there, choose “Upload an existing Margini file,” then pick Replace or Add to existing. With Replace, Clarity shows you what is new, changed, already in another business, or in the cloud but not in your file before anything is saved. You can tick a box to remove the extra records, or import the whole file as new copies instead.
• On a shared or public computer, use “Clear data from this device” in Manage Data when done, ideally after backing up first.
• If it's been about a week since your last backup and you've changed things, the app reminds you with a one-click “Back up now.” Dismissible, it won't badger you.

Checking your sync status, or if it fails

⚙ Settings → Business → “Data & sync” shows exactly where you stand: This device only, Sync is on / Up to date (with a relative last-synchronized time and any pending change count), Offline, or Conflicts needing review. Offline isn't treated as an error — your changes stay safely queued on this device and catch up once you're back online. A conflict (two devices changed the same record) shows what changed on each side so you can pick which one to keep, nothing is silently overwritten.

Staying current with teammates. Sales, expenses, receivables, people, recurring revenue and payroll all refresh automatically whenever you switch back to this tab, and again every 3 minutes while it stays open, so two people working on the same business around the same time catch up without a manual reload. It is a periodic catch-up, not instant, a change made elsewhere can still take a few minutes to appear.

If your role blocks a change. If the business’s rules mean your role can’t make a particular change, for example a Manager trying to correct an entry only a Bookkeeper or Admin can edit, Clarity shows “Not saved: your role can’t make this change” with a “Discard my change” option, instead of retrying forever or treating it like a conflict with another device.

If the data can’t be stored. If a change has a value the shared account can’t keep, for example a blank where a date or number is needed, Clarity shows “Not saved: the database rejected this change” with the reason and a “Discard my change” option, instead of retrying it forever without telling you. Discard it, then enter the value again.

Signing out. When you sign out, Clarity first tries to send any changes still waiting on this device to your account. If some cannot be sent (for example, you are offline, or a change needs your decision), it tells you how many and lets you stay signed in. If you sign out anyway, those changes are lost. Signing out also removes this device's copy of your cloud businesses, and signing back in loads your full history again from your account, not just recent changes. Invoices and drafts are the exception to being in your account: they are saved on this device only, so the sign-out message tells you how many would be deleted. Use Back up to cloud first if you want to keep them.

Saving while Clarity is syncing. If you save an entry at the moment Clarity is in the middle of syncing, that entry is still sent to your account. Earlier, in rare cases, it could stay on your device only.