# Getting Started

VisiBooks keeps double-entry books for one or many entities (LLCs,
corporations, properties) under a single login. This guide takes you from a
fresh account to categorized transactions.

## Workspaces and entities

Everything in VisiBooks belongs to a **workspace**:

- **Entity workspaces** — one per company. Each has its own chart of
  accounts, bank connections, transactions, and reports. Switch entities with
  the workspace picker in the sidebar.
- **Your personal workspace** — an inbox for personal accounts (like a
  personal credit card used across businesses). It routes spending to your
  entities rather than keeping a ledger of its own.

Bank connections, integrations, and API keys all belong to the workspace you
create them in. If a Connect button seems to have "lost" a connection, check
which workspace you're viewing — the Integrations page shows "Connected in
<entity>" when another of your entities holds it.

## Starting from QuickBooks

If an entity has existing books in QuickBooks Online, use **Settings → Start
from QBO**. The cutover imports your chart of accounts, opening balances as
of a date you choose (they must tie to the penny — the import refuses
anything that doesn't balance), open invoices and bills, and an archived copy
of your QBO history for reference. After the cutover, QBO is reference-only:
post nothing new there.

## Connecting banks

**Settings → Integrations** in the entity's workspace:

- **Mercury** — direct API connection with real-time webhooks. Paste an API
  token from Mercury's settings.
- **Stripe (Direct API)** — imports your Stripe balance transactions
  (charges, fees, payouts, refunds) as their own feed. Use a restricted key
  with **Balance → Read** only.
- **Rentvine** — for property managers: matches your bank's batch deposits
  to Rentvine settlements and splits them into rent, late fees, security
  deposits, and prepaid rent automatically.
- **Bank feeds via Stripe Financial Connections** — for banks without a
  direct integration.
- **CSV import** — for accounts with no live feed, upload statements to a
  CSV feed. Imports are idempotent: re-uploading the same rows never
  duplicates them.

Each feed maps to a GL account in your chart (bank feeds to asset accounts,
card feeds to liability accounts) — transactions you categorize post real
journal entries against that account.

## The books are append-only

One principle explains most of how VisiBooks behaves: **posted entries are
never edited**. Corrections are reversals — a mistake and its fix both stay
in the ledger, entries always balance, and closed periods reject changes.
This is why undo creates a reversing entry rather than deleting anything,
and it's what makes the audit trail trustworthy.

Next: [Daily bookkeeping](https://docs.visibooks.app/using/daily-bookkeeping/) — the transaction inbox
and everything you can do to a bank line.