First-Hour Walkthrough #

A guided 60 minutes from “Bizuno just installed” to “I have a working set
of books and posted my first invoice.” If you follow this in order, you’ll
hit the two effectively-permanent settings in the right order, with
enough context to choose well — then practice the daily-use motion before
making any other commitments.

Total time: about 60 minutes. Don’t rush; the choices you make in the
first 15 minutes are the ones that hurt to change later.

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Before you start #

You should already have:

• ☐ Bizuno installed (composer, manual, WP plugin, or PhreeSoft cloud)
• ☐ The installer’s initial admin login working
• ☐ Decided on your default currency (this is permanent)
• ☐ Decided on your first fiscal-year start date (also permanent)

If you don’t have answers to the last two, stop. Talk to your accountant.
Come back when you do. Picking these wrong is the most common reason
Bizuno deployments get rebuilt.

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Step 1 — Log in and set company info (5 min) #

Where: Settings → Company

What to set:

• Legal business name
• DBA / trade name (if different)
• Address (used on every invoice, statement, and report header)
• Telephone, email, website
• Tax ID / EIN
• Logo (PNG, recommended 600×200 or similar; goes on every PDF form)

Why first: The company name + address appear on every PDF Bizuno
generates from this point forward. Setting them now saves you a
re-export-everything moment later.

Don’t worry about: Default GL accounts, banking, anything in the
sub-tabs beyond Company. We’ll come back.

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Step 2 — Chart of accounts (10 min) #

Where: PhreeBooks → Chart → Manage

If the installer asked you to pick a COA template, your COA already
exists. Open Chart to see what you’ve got.

What to do:

• Scroll through the existing accounts. Is the structure roughly what
  you want? Cash, AR, Inventory, AP, Sales Tax Collected, Sales,
  COGS, Expenses, Retained Earnings — those are the load-bearing ones.
• Rename freely. Bizuno keys off account ID, not name. Renaming
  “Sales” to “Service Revenue” is fine.
• Add accounts you’ll need (extra revenue categories, expense
  buckets, specific bank accounts).
• Mark heading rows if you want sub-account grouping in reports.
• Set defaults per account type in PhreeBooks → Tools → Defaults
  — the default AR, default Sales account, default COGS, default
  Inventory. Bizuno uses these when a transaction doesn’t specify.

Avoid:

• Deleting accounts the templates ship with — even if you don’t think
  you’ll use them. Mark them inactive instead. Deletion after any
  posting is awkward.
• Building a 200-account COA on day one. Start with what you actually
  use; add more later when you find yourself wishing for a category.

Why now: Every invoice, payment, and journal you post next refers
to GL accounts. Setting up COA first means those references just work.

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Step 3 — Fiscal year start date (5 min) ⚠️ PERMANENT #

Where: Settings → PhreeBooks → Fiscal Year

This is one of the two effectively-permanent settings. Changing it
after you’ve posted transactions means rebuilding journal_periods and
re-stamping period on every row in journal_main. Doable but painful.

What to set:

• First day of your fiscal year (e.g. 2026-01-01 for calendar-year
  US businesses, 2026-07-01 for fiscal-July starts, 2026-10-01 for
  US government / many education books)
• Number of periods per year (usually 12 = months; some retail
  businesses use 13 four-week periods)

Verify: PhreeBooks → Chart → Periods should now show 12 (or your
chosen number) rows for the current fiscal year. The current period
should be the one containing today.

Why now: Every transaction stamps its period from post_date
against this table. Get it set up before you post anything.

See Multi-store, multi-period, multi-currency
for the full implications.

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Step 4 — Currency and locale (3 min) #

Where: Settings → Locale

What to set:

• Default currency (⚠️ PERMANENT — should already match what you
  picked at install)
• Date format (Y-m-d, m/d/Y, d/m/Y, etc.)
• Number format (decimal separator, thousands separator)
• Time zone

Multi-currency on/off: Leave off unless you actively transact in
multiple currencies. Turning it on later works fine; just easier to keep
the UI simple when you don’t need the second-currency fields.

Why now: Every form, report, and PDF respects locale settings.
Setting them once propagates everywhere.

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Step 5 — Stores (5 min, skip if single-location) #

Where: Settings → Stores

If you operate from a single location, skip this. Bizuno uses
store_id = 0 for the default store and you’ll never see the field
again.

If you operate multiple locations (warehouses, retail stores,
jobsites):

• Create one store row per physical location
• Each store has its own name, address, default contact preferences,
  optional GL overrides
• Decide whether staff are restricted to “their” store — set the
  restrict_store flag per user in Settings → Users

Why now: Adding stores later is fine, but moving existing
transactions into the right store_id retroactively is awkward. Easier
to start with the right structure.

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Step 6 — Master data starter (5 min) #

Create the smallest possible set of master data to test the workflow:

One customer: Customers → Manage → New

• Name, address, default terms (e.g. Net 30)
• Default GL accounts can stay blank — they’ll fall back to the COA
  defaults

One vendor: Vendors → Manage → New

• Same fields, different ctype flag

One inventory item: Inventory → Manage → New

• SKU, description
• Inventory type — pick carefully. si = “Stock Item, Standard
  Cost” is a safe default for physical goods. sa = “Stock Assembly”.
  Non-COGS types like nc are for services / non-stock items.
• Price (sale price), cost (purchase cost)
• Default GL accounts

Why this much only: You’re about to test the invoice cycle. One of
each is enough to validate the GL posts correctly.

See Inventory types and COGS
before picking the type — it’s the third effectively-permanent decision
of the day, per SKU.

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Step 7 — Your first invoice (10 min) #

Where: Customers → Sales (Invoice) → New

• Pick the customer you just created
• Add the inventory item, qty 1
• Confirm price, tax, total
• Save

Then immediately check the GL:

Where: PhreeBooks → Register (pick the AR account)

You should see one new line: a debit of the invoice total, dated today.

And the inventory:

Where: Inventory → Manage → click the SKU → History

You should see a quantity-out movement dated today.

And the COGS:

Where: PhreeBooks → Register (pick the COGS account)

You should see a debit of the item’s cost.

If those three show as expected, your full Sales → AR → COGS → Inventory
plumbing is working. This is the moment Bizuno “clicks.”

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Step 8 — Your first report (5 min) #

Where: PhreeForm → Reports → Trial Balance (or any built-in report)

• Run the report as of today
• Confirm AR has the invoice total
• Confirm Sales has the revenue
• Confirm Inventory dropped by the item’s cost
• Confirm COGS picked it up

Save the report’s output (PDF or CSV) somewhere. It’s your first
“snapshot” — useful baseline if you ever need to verify a future
restore.

Bonus: Generate a PDF of the invoice itself.

Where: From the invoice manager, click Print on the row.

If you get a clean PDF with your logo and company info, the PDF engine
is working end-to-end.

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Step 9 — Configure backups (5 min) #

Where: Settings → Bizuno → Tools → Backup

• Set the backup destination (BIZUNO_DATA/backups/ is the default;
  off-host is better)
• Choose schedule (daily is sensible for active books)
• Test the backup tool now — run one manually, find the file on disk

Then set up an off-host copy outside Bizuno. cron + mysqldump +
rsync / aws s3 cp is the durable pattern. See
Backup and restore.

Why now: Once you start putting real data in, backups stop being
optional. Set them up before the first real day’s posting.

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Step 10 — What to skip on day one #

Resist the temptation to configure these now. They’re more useful once
you’ve run a few weeks of routine transactions:

• Payroll — needs employees, tax tables, pay-period setup. Defer
  until you actually run a payroll.
• EDI — only relevant if you trade with EDI partners. Most don’t.
• Custom forms — the built-in invoice and packing slip work. Brand
  them later.
• PhreeForm custom reports — start with the 50+ built-in reports.
  Build custom ones when you find yourself wanting something specific.
• Custom payment gateways — set up the built-in Authorize.net /
  Stripe path once you’re actually taking online payments.
• WooCommerce sync — set up only if you have a WC store.
• Quality module — only relevant if you run ISO-9001-style
  processes. Most small businesses don’t.

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Where to go next #

You now have:

• A configured business with permanent decisions made
• One customer, one vendor, one inventory item
• One posted invoice with verified GL impact
• A working backup

Recommended next reads, in order of payoff:

1. The journal_id taxonomy —
   the conceptual key to the whole codebase. 15 minutes.
2. Quote → SO → Invoice → Payment → Deposit —
   the full customer-cycle workflow. Practice it end-to-end with your
   test customer.
3. PO → Receive → Vendor Invoice → Pay Bill —
   the vendor-side mirror.
4. Multi-store, multi-period, multi-currency —
   the nuance behind the choices you just made.

Then start posting real transactions. Best way to learn an accounting
system is to use it.

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If something doesn’t work #

Symptom	First check
Login works but most menus are missing	Wrong role assigned to your user; see Settings → Users
“No font has been set” PDF error	Composer didn’t pull tFPDF — composer install
Invoice saves but GL doesn’t update	Cache out of sync — Settings → Bizuno → Tools → Clear Business Cache
Dropdown values show as raw keys (qa_status_1)	Same cache issue
“Period not found” on save	Fiscal calendar doesn’t cover today’s date — fyAdd or check Step 3
Logo not appearing on PDF	Logo path / file permissions on BIZUNO_DATA/images/

For anything else, see
Troubleshooting — start with
Trap and trace files
to read what Bizuno is actually complaining about.

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Related #

• What is Bizuno — context, if you skipped it
• Three ways to run it — deployment options
• Multi-store, multi-period, multi-currency — the conceptual chapter
• Backup and restore — Step 9 detail
• Cache out of sync — when things look weird