Ledgers

A ledger is a running account of money (or units, such as hours) attached to any record: the fees on a process, the costs of an order, the charges for a claim, a vendor’s invoice for a month of work. Each ledger is a list of line items that add up to a balance. Because the ledger belongs to the record, it is secured, reported on, and audited alongside everything else about that record.

Ledgers cover the billing life cycle:

• Pricing. A ledger template lists the expected line items and their default amounts. Rules can price each line from the record’s data, such as a fee that depends on the client or the jurisdiction.
• Calculation. QBO totals debits and credits into a balance, and an adjusted balance that counts only the items you include. Ledgers can nest, so a summary ledger rolls up the totals of others.
• Approval and invoicing. Approving a ledger generates its invoice from a document template and locks it. Posting a ledger records it as final.
• Payment. Charge a stored payment method for the balance through a payment gateway such as Authorize.Net, or record a payment and apply it to the outstanding items.

Key concepts

Concept	In QBO	What it does
Ledger	Ledger	One account, bound to a parent record through Object and ObjectID. Holds the balance, status, payee, and invoice.
Line item	LedgerItem	One charge, credit, or payment: amount, units, rate, dates, and whether it is a debit and counts toward the adjusted balance.
Ledger template	LedgerTemplate	Defines a kind of ledger: its items, how it calculates, and which invoice it produces.
Template item	LedgerTemplateItem	Defines one expected line item, with defaults and optional rule-based pricing.

AI · built in

QBO can record what its AI features cost. When an AI operation is given a ledger, QBO adds a line item for each type of token used (input, cached input, output, and reasoning), priced at your configured per-model rates. You can then report on AI spend per record or per client like any other cost, or bill it back.

Choose your view

Use the buttons under the page title. End user covers working with a ledger on a record; Power user covers ledger templates, pricing rules, and invoices; Developer covers the API, payments, and AI usage tracking.

Pricing rules use the matrices described in Business Rules. Invoices are generated documents; see Document Management.