LedgerLou
Start free

Help

Get started with LedgerLou

Two ways to work your books, and both begin with the same free account. Ask Lou, our built-in bookkeeper, or connect your own AI agent and work from there.

Start with LouConnect QuickBooks, ask for a cleanup, approve the changes.Connect your agentGive your AI agent (Claude, ChatGPT, and more) a direct line to your books with one key.

Part 1

Get started with Lou

Lou reads your QuickBooks, drafts the changes you ask for, and waits. From sign-up to your first approved batch takes four steps.

  1. 1

    Create your account

    Create a free account with your email. You start with free credit to try Lou on your real books, and we don’t ask for a card until you begin a trial.

  2. 2

    Connect QuickBooks

    Choose Connect QuickBooks and sign in with Intuit. You authorize LedgerLou on Intuit’s own screen, so we never see your QuickBooks password, and you can disconnect at any time.

    Have more than one set of books? Add each company under Manage companies and switch between them from the company menu.

  3. 3

    Ask for a cleanup

    Tell Lou what you want in plain English. Specific requests work best: name the period, the account or the vendor.

    • Categorize last month’s Uncategorized expenses.
    • Find anything filed under Meals that looks like software.
    • Merge the duplicate Amazon vendors.
    • What changed in the books since the last close?
  4. 4

    Review and approve

    Lou answers with a draft, not a done deed. Each proposed change shows what moves, on which record, and for how much. Approve it and it posts to QuickBooks; reject it and it is discarded. You can approve a batch at once or go row by row.

    Prefer not to review routine edits one at a time? Switch on Auto in the message box and routine changes you asked for are reviewed and applied for you. Deletes, voids and outgoing emails always wait for your approval.

Part 2

Set up Connect

Connect is a QuickBooks connector for your own AI agent: it lets your agent work with the QuickBooks companies you’ve linked to LedgerLou, over the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It works with Claude Code today. One-click connection for the Claude apps and ChatGPT is on the way.

Before you begin you need a LedgerLou account with at least one QuickBooks company connected (Part 1, steps 1 and 2), and Claude Code installed.

  1. 1

    Create an API key

    In LedgerLou, open Settings → API keys. Give the key a name you’ll recognize later, such as “Claude Code on my laptop”, and choose what it may do:

    • Read only — your agent can look things up and run reports. It can’t change anything.
    • Read and write — your agent can also create, edit, void, delete and email.

    Choose Create key and copy it straight away. We show a key once and store only a fingerprint of it, so it can’t be recovered later. A key reaches every company connected to your account.

  2. 2

    Add LedgerLou to your agent

    Run this in a terminal, with your key in place of YOUR_KEY. LedgerLou shows the same command, ready to copy, right after it creates a key.

    Terminal
    claude mcp add --scope user --transport http ledgerlou https://app.ledgerlou.com/api/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY"

    --scope user makes LedgerLou available in every project. Without it, Claude Code registers the server only for the folder you ran the command in.

    Using another MCP client?

    Any client that supports remote MCP servers over Streamable HTTP with a custom header can connect. Use these settings, or see the setup for Grok, Cursor and VS Code:

    URL
    https://app.ledgerlou.com/api/mcp
    Header
    Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY
  3. 3

    Check the connection

    List your servers. LedgerLou should report as connected:

    Terminal
    claude mcp list

    Then start a new Claude Code session and ask it to list my QuickBooks companies. A session that was already open won’t see a server added after it started.

Part 3

Use Connect

Ask your agent the way you would ask a colleague. It picks the tools; you don’t need to name them.

Questions

  • ›Which vendors did we pay most last quarter?
  • ›Run a Profit and Loss for January to March, accrual basis.
  • ›Show unpaid invoices more than 60 days old.

Changes

  • ›Move May’s Stripe fees to Bank Charges.
  • ›Book a $2,400 rent accrual for October.
  • ›Attach this receipt to the Staples expense from May 9.

Who approves changes

With Lou, every change waits for your approval inside LedgerLou. Connect is different: it gives your agent direct access, so a change posts to QuickBooks the moment your agent makes it.

The checkpoint is your agent, not LedgerLou. Claude Code asks before it runs a tool unless you’ve told it to always allow that tool. Keep the write tools on “ask”, and have your agent show you what it intends to change before it changes it. A delete in QuickBooks can’t be undone.

Three things limit what can go wrong. A read-only key can’t change anything. You can revoke a key under Settings → API keys and it stops working at once. And LedgerLou records every write made through Connect, whether it succeeded or failed.

Files and PDFs

Files don’t travel inside a tool call, so they move through short-lived links. To attach a file from your computer, your agent asks for an upload link, sends the file to it, then attaches it to the record — you just say which file and which record. Files can be up to 25 MB, and an upload link lasts two hours. A file that already sits at a public https address can be attached from there directly.

To get the PDF of an invoice or another sales form, ask for it. Your agent receives a download link that lasts ten minutes and can save the file for you.

Reference

Tool reference

Connect gives your agent fourteen tools. A read-only key gets the first six; a read-and-write key gets them all.

Readevery key

list_companies
Lists your connected QuickBooks companies. Every other tool needs a company from here.
query
Runs a QuickBooks query, such as every invoice since January.
read_entity
Fetches one record in full.
get_report
Runs a report: Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Trial Balance, General Ledger, aged receivables and payables, and more.
get_pdf_url
Returns a 10-minute download link to the PDF of an invoice, estimate, credit memo, sales receipt, refund receipt or purchase order.
qbo_get
Reads any other QuickBooks Online accounting endpoint, such as change data capture or company preferences.

Writeread-and-write keys only

create_entity
Creates a record: journal entries, bills, expenses, invoices, customers, vendors, accounts and more.
update_entity
Changes fields on a record. Only the fields sent are changed.
delete_entity
Permanently deletes a transaction. Customers, vendors and accounts can’t be deleted; they are made inactive with update_entity.
void_entity
Voids an invoice, payment, bill payment or expense: amounts go to zero and the record stays.
send_entity
Emails a sales form from QuickBooks to the address on the record, or to one you give.
create_upload_url
Returns a one-time link your agent uploads a local file to, ready for attach_file.
attach_file
Attaches a file to a record: a receipt on an expense, backup on a journal entry.
qbo_post
Writes to any other accounting endpoint, including batches of up to 30 operations.

Between them these cover the QuickBooks Online accounting API: the dedicated tools check a request before it reaches QuickBooks, and qbo_get and qbo_post reach everything else.

Reference

Limits

What Connect can’t do, mostly because QuickBooks doesn’t offer it to any outside app.

  • The bank feed: transactions waiting “For review” can’t be categorized or matched through the API.
  • Reconciling an account, and bank rules.
  • Payroll, payments processing and time tracking, which are separate Intuit services.
  • QuickBooks Desktop. Connect works with QuickBooks Online.

You can hold up to ten active keys. An oversized answer is refused with advice on narrowing it, rather than cut short.

Reference

Troubleshooting

“Missing or invalid API key”

The key is mistyped, revoked, or missing its Bearer prefix. The header must read Authorization: Bearer ll_live_…. If you no longer have the key, revoke it under Settings → API keys and create another; we only ever show a key once.

My agent doesn’t list LedgerLou

Claude Code registers a server for the folder you ran the command in unless you pass --scope user. Run the command again with that flag, then start a new session: a running session doesn’t pick up servers added after it started.

“This API key is read-only”

Your agent tried to change something with a read-only key. Create a read-and-write key under Settings → API keys and add it in place of the old one.

“…is disconnected from QuickBooks”

QuickBooks authorization for that company has lapsed or was removed. Open LedgerLou, go to Manage companies and reconnect it; your key keeps working.

“The result is too large to return”

A single answer is capped so it fits in your agent’s context. Ask for fewer columns, a narrower date range, or a page at a time. QuickBooks queries return 100 rows unless the statement sets MAXRESULTS (up to 1,000).

“Stale Object Error” on an update

The record changed in QuickBooks after your agent read it. Have it read the record again and retry; nothing was written.

Still stuck? Write to support@ledgerlou.com and tell us what you asked for and what came back.

Ready to try it on your books?

Free credit to start, and no card until you begin a trial.

Start free

LedgerLou is an independent product. QuickBooks and Intuit are trademarks of Intuit Inc.; Claude is a trademark of Anthropic, PBC; ChatGPT is a trademark of OpenAI. LedgerLou is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.