Onboarding walkthrough

Onboarding takes a few minutes and sets the foundations for your books. Nothing here is permanent — you can change almost everything later under Organisation settings.

Step 1 — Business

Your organisation name, and your GST registration details if you are registered: GST number, filing frequency (monthly, two-monthly or six-monthly), and accounting basis (payments or invoice). These drive how every transaction is treated, so match them to your IRD registration exactly. If you are not GST registered, leave registration off and Nightbooks keeps everything GST-free.

Step 2 — Your starting path

• Start fresh — Nightbooks seeds a standard New Zealand chart of accounts with GST rates configured, and your books begin from your first bank transaction or opening balances.

• Import from Xero — Nightbooks connects to Xero and brings your existing books across, verified against your Xero trial balance. See Start fresh vs import from Xero for how to choose.

Step 3 — Business profile

Your structure (sole trader, partnership, company, trust), industry, NZBN, and a few yes/no questions — employees, stock, vehicles, home office. These tune the AI: its coding suggestions and health checks account for how your business actually operates.

Step 4 — Bank accounts

Optionally add the bank accounts you will connect feeds for. You can also do this later from the Bank accounts page.

After the wizard

Fresh-start organisations land on Bank feeds to connect their bank. Xero importers land on Import data to run the import. Either way, the dashboard shows your position as soon as data arrives.