How Haruno works
The model behind Haruno for Mac, in accounting terms: what goes in, what a close does with it, what comes out, what stays your judgment and where your data lives.
The short version
Haruno for Mac turns each company's QuickBooks Online books into a closed month. You bring in a company's Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss, as exports or synced from QuickBooks, Haruno drafts a mapping of its accounts to statement lines, and you approve it. From then on, each close reads every month the company has, posts the figures to a ledger through that mapping, runs the integrity checks, builds the reports and locks the months it can stand behind. Apart from the sync and the questions for management drafted after a close, all of that runs on your Mac and sends nothing. Beside the books sits an assistant you can ask about any figure or finding: it explains and drafts, and every change to the books is made with the app's own controls, apart from the mapping file it edits when you ask.
On Windows: Haruno for Windows runs the same month-end close, with the portfolio, mapping, reconciliation, reports and lock. Where it differs from the Mac, see Haruno on Windows.
The portfolio and its companies
The Portfolio is Haruno's home page, the first row in the sidebar (⌘1). A company is a business whose books you close, kept apart from the others with its own files, mapping, figures, reports and lock. Until its first close, a company's page is a setup page with four steps; after it, the company's dashboard. A list of your companies sits beside the Portfolio and every company page, so you can switch in one click.
You set each company's reporting currency and fiscal year-end month yourself in Company details: an ordinary QuickBooks export states neither (a company added from QuickBooks starts with the ones QuickBooks gives, when it gives both), and Haruno never converts one currency into another. The mapping cannot be approved until both are set.
Haruno does not consolidate. Each company closes on its own books, nothing is eliminated between companies, and the Portfolio's combined figures add up each company's own, never across currencies.
Read more: Company details, The company page and Pricing, which is per company.
The exports a company sends
Every close is built from months already on your Mac, not from a live connection: exports you add, or months that Sync copies from QuickBooks. From exports, each company sends a Balance Sheet and a Profit and Loss from QuickBooks Online, exported to Excel (.xlsx) on an accrual basis, with one column per month, ending on the last day of a month and in the company's reporting currency. Haruno will not draft a mapping without both.
Excel matters because Haruno reads which lines are subtotals from QuickBooks' formulas; a CSV holds values only. Turn account numbers on in QuickBooks before the first draft, if whoever keeps the books agrees: Haruno finds cash by account number, and without numbers it reads cash from the asset accounts under a balance-sheet line that says cash or bank, which the review asks you to check.
Every other file is optional and adds a check, a panel or a report; send it with the company's first exports. A company that sends only the two statements still closes, with no reconciliation binder.
QuickBooks Online. Connect a company to QuickBooks and Haruno fetches its months with Sync instead of exports. A company uses one way, not both. Haruno only reads from QuickBooks, and the close never contacts it (QuickBooks and a company's books).
Read more: What a company sends and Export settings that matter.
Reading the exports
Adding files copies them into the company and reads them; it posts nothing and never changes the mapping. Haruno recognizes a QuickBooks report by its title block, reads the values Excel stored without recalculating a formula, sets hidden sheets aside, and tells you what each file is, its period and its basis, so a wrong export shows up before a close.
Check each row of the Data added to sheet before you click Done. The setup page lists a company's files only until you draft its mapping, and the company page's Files tab lists them after its first close; there a file a close has read stays, and every close reads every file.
Read more: How Haruno reads a file, Files Haruno refuses or skips and Adding files after the mapping exists.
The account mapping: drafted once, approved by you
The mapping is the crosswalk from the chart of accounts to the statement captions: every statement line with its subtotals, which account rolls into which line, and the policies and exemptions you state. Haruno drafts it once from the company's exports or synced months, following their own sections, captions and formulas. You answer what the files cannot say and click Approve mapping; every close then applies it as it stands, and next month's statements need no change.
The mapping holds no figures; it decides where they are presented. So a mapping error can leave the ledger in balance while the statements are wrong, and several checks exist to catch exactly that.
Some answers are yours alone, asked only when the files make them relevant: materiality (asked with a reconciliation workbook; $1,000 stands unless you answer otherwise), accounts reconciled elsewhere, a capitalization threshold (never drafted), the receivable and payable accounts an A/R or A/P aging ties to (candidates named, never chosen for a company built from files), and the report scale.
Read more: What the mapping is, Questions only you answer and Changing the mapping.
The ledger
The ledger keeps what the exports or the sync said: every account's month-end balance and monthly activity, one figure per account per month, not transactions. There is one for the whole portfolio, each company kept apart. The statements, the checks, the pages in the app and the reports are all computed from it through the mapping, so any figure traces back to an account, a month and the export or sync it came from.
- Figures reach the ledger only at a close, and all at once: every figure from a company's exports or synced months, or none.
- You never edit it. For the entries behind a figure, run the account's detail in QuickBooks Online.
Read more: Where the books are stored and Tracing a figure to its source.
The close: one run
A close is one run for one company or the whole portfolio: it reads every export or synced month, posts the figures, runs the checks, builds the reports and locks the reported months not yet locked, except any it must leave open. The close itself uses none of your usage allowance; the questions for management that Haruno drafts when it ends do. Close month… first runs a pre-flight, which writes nothing; nothing is written until you click Close month.
The checks run before the reports and the reports before the lock, so the statement package states what the checks found and no month is locked unless its reports can be built. Each step is written whole or not at all, and a problem with one company stops only that company.
- There is no month picker. A first close of exports covering seven months locks all seven, unless a month has no Balance Sheet or was exported or synced before it ended: that month is reported but left open.
- Findings never stop a close. A month whose statements do not tie is locked all the same, as reported with exception.
- You see what the checks find on new exports only after the months lock, so check each file's import result first.
- There is no undo. Locked months stay locked until you reopen them with a reason.
Read more: What a close is, The pre-flight and When the close refuses.
Checks, findings and questions
Every close runs 31 integrity checks after posting and before any report: 29 on the books and two solvency checks on the company. A failed check raises a finding; a pattern the close cannot judge becomes a question instead. Findings change the state a month is locked with.
| Kind | What it is | Can it make a month an exception? |
|---|---|---|
| Finding | A defect in the books, such as an account on no statement line. | Yes, if high or medium and open at the lock. |
| Question | A pattern only a person can judge, such as a possible prepayment. | Never. |
| Solvency indicator | A fact about the company, not the books, such as negative equity. | Never. |
| Variance | A fact about the business, such as a category over budget. | Never. |
Findings are high (red), medium (amber) or low (gray). High and medium findings are open; a company with none is clean.
Two rules run through the whole guide. A variance is not a finding: being over budget is a figure, not a defect in the books. A blank is not a zero: a check that needs a file the company did not send says nothing, so no finding can mean nothing was tested. On the pages in the app, a dash means a figure could not be stated.
Work through them on the Findings & questions tab. Resolve… is offered for four kinds of finding; the rest are fixed at their source (the books, the files or the mapping) and closed again.
Read more: The checks, Questions, not findings and Resolving a finding.
Reconciliation in brief
Reconciliation ties each balance-sheet account that has a schedule in the company's reconciliation workbook, or a QuickBooks reconciliation report saved as a PDF, to its general-ledger balance, to the cent. Haruno adds up the schedule itself rather than trusting a typed difference. The workbook is optional: without one or a report, a company closes normally, but nothing is reconciled and the Reports card has no Reconciliation row.
| Status | Rule |
|---|---|
| reconciled (green) | The difference rounds to 0.00. |
| exception (red) | One cent or more, either way. It raises a high-severity finding. |
| open (amber) | No difference could be computed: untested, not reconciled. |
There is no tolerance beyond the cent, so a legitimate timing item is an exception too. Materiality decides which balances without a schedule are worth chasing, never whether a schedule ties.
Read more: What reconciled means, Coverage and exemptions and Companies without a workbook.
The lock, reopening and restatements
When a close finishes, every month it reported and could stand behind is locked; a month with no Balance Sheet, or exported or synced before it ended, is reported but left open until a later close. A figure a locked month presented changes only if someone reopens the month with a written reason, which stays with it for good. A figure that then moves is a restatement: the statement package lists it under Restated periods, and the adjustments log keeps it, before and after, with who reopened the month and why.
| Close state | What it means |
|---|---|
| fully reconciled (green) | Locked with no high or medium finding open, in a month that has a reconciliation. |
| reported with exception (red) | Locked with at least one high or medium finding open. |
| not reconciled (gray) | Locked with no high or medium finding open, in a month with no reconciliation: nothing was tied to a schedule. |
| open (amber) | Not locked: never closed, reopened and not closed again, or reported but left open (no Balance Sheet for it, or exported or synced before the month ended). |
| not recorded (gray) | Locked by an earlier version of Haruno that did not record its findings. |
The close state is a snapshot of what was known at the lock: fixing a finding later does not change it until the month is reopened and closed again. The lock is Haruno's, not QuickBooks'. It stops a changed figure of more than half a cent entering a reported month, whatever its materiality.
To reopen, click the close-state chip in the company's header and use Reopen… in the Months sheet, or click Correct… on a close result the lock has refused, which lets you reopen the months or record the difference in the next open month instead. Placeholder reasons such as tbd or n/a are refused. Anyone using Haruno on the Mac can reopen a month, so agree in your practice who may.
Read more: What trips the lock, Reopening a month and Why the lock matters.
The reports, and the pages in the app
A company's reports are drawn from its books each time you open or export one, so they follow every close, reopening and recorded correction. A close keeps no report files, apart from the adjustments log.
| Report | What it is, and for whom |
|---|---|
| Statements | The month's statements (balance sheet, income statement, cash flows and trial balance), notes and analysis panels, with a section headed Issued with unresolved findings before the statements when high or medium findings are open. For management and your file, not investors. |
| Reconciliation | Each schedule recomputed against the general ledger. Your working papers. |
| Investor report | One company's figures for its investors, without findings, close state or full statements. Exports say Draft — not reviewed until someone marks the report reviewed. |
| Adjustments log | A CSV file of every figure that moved after its month was reported, or was corrected in a later month. |
| Portfolio report | Every company with a close, in one report, for you and your team only. |
Open a company's reports from the Reports card on its page: Statements, Reconciliation and Investor report open their tabs. To send one, choose Export… in its … menu and pick a folder; Haruno saves a PDF and a web page there. The Portfolio report has Books ▸ Export Portfolio Report…. Keep the PDFs you send: they are your only record of what went out. The Portfolio and company pages themselves are not reports and have no print or PDF command.
Read more: What a close writes, Export a report as a PDF and a web page and A company's page.
The assistant converses; the app acts
The app does every step that changes the books: adding files, drafting and approving the mapping, closing and reopening months, and recording an answer. The assistant, in Chat, explains, drafts and proposes. It has none of the app's controls: the books are read-only to it, except a company's mapping file, which it changes only when you ask, and every other change to them is a button you press.
| You want to | Who does it |
|---|---|
| Add files, approve the mapping, close or reopen a month | The app, with your answers and reasons |
| Record an answer or an exemption | The app: Resolve… or a question's answer button |
| Understand a figure or a finding | The assistant: an ask button, or Chat |
| Draft a disclosure, commentary, a memo or an email | The assistant |
| Work out a mapping answer or a treatment | The assistant proposes; you apply it in the app, ask the assistant to change the mapping file, or book it in QuickBooks |
A close is worth something only if every figure traces to a source file and every judgment was made by a person. So the assistant will not close, reopen or restate a month, record an answer or approve a mapping, edit your books beyond a mapping file you ask it to change, recompute or convert a figure, decide a policy or conclude on going concern, or send anything without asking. Its answers are drafts: check each figure before you quote it.
Buttons such as Ask Haruno and Explain this finding put a question about that card into the chat box, which opens beside the page. Nothing is sent until you press send.
Read more: What Haruno will not do and Checking an answer.
Where your data lives
Your books live on your Mac, by default in ~/Library/Application Support/Haruno/Books; Settings ▸ Books ▸ Portfolio location moves them. Importing, the mapping, closing, reopening and the reports run on your Mac and send nothing. Syncing a company from QuickBooks brings its months to your Mac through Haruno's servers, which keep no financial data. Company data leaves your Mac only through the assistant, including the questions for management it drafts after a close, or when you send a report on yourself. A message goes through Inferara's hosted service to the model provider that answers.
| What you do | What leaves your Mac |
|---|---|
| Import, map, close, reopen, open or export a report | Nothing |
| A close ends | The month's topics and figures, in the request that drafts the questions for management |
| Press an ask button | Nothing until you press send |
| Send a chat message | The message, what was staged, the files and books Haruno opens (any company's), your memory while Use memory is on, and what searches and connectors return |
| Dictate a message | The recording and a short extract of the chat, as soon as you stop recording |
| A scheduled task of your own runs | Like a chat: its instructions and what it reads |
Nothing is copied to your other computers, and a portfolio is not shared between two Macs or two people. Inferara's service does not store the content of your messages or Haruno's replies, apart from a model provider's error text, which can quote part of a request, kept up to 30 days, and your data is not used to train AI models.
Read more: What each action sends, Requests besides your messages, What stays on your Mac, What Inferara retains and Private inference and on-premises deployment.
A month with Haruno
Once a company is set up, every month follows the same routine. To close every company in one run, start the close from the Portfolio toolbar. The first setup is in Your first close.
- When the month's books are final in QuickBooks Online, ask for the exports.
The Balance Sheet as of the month's last day and the Profit and Loss with the month as its own column, accrual basis, in Excel, plus the optional files the company uses and, if it keeps one, the month's reconciliation workbook dated in that month. See What to ask for each month. A scheduled task can draft the request.
- Add the exports, or sync, and check what Haruno read.
With the company's page open, choose Books ▸ Import Exports… and add the files. In the Data added to sheet, look for the month-end you are closing and Accrual basis before you click Done. For a company connected to QuickBooks, click Sync on its page once the month has ended instead.
- Click Close month… and read the pre-flight.
When the company's card says Will close, click Close month. Locked months show only as a grey note on that card and stop nothing. If it says Will not close, its own sentence says why; see The pre-flight.
- Read the result.
Closed means the new months are reported and locked. After Partly closed or Did not close, see When the close refuses, and don't send a partly closed company's reports.
- Work through the findings and questions.
On the Findings & questions tab, fix each finding and look at the invoice behind each question; press Re-run checks first if the rows have no Resolve… or answer buttons. The Questions for management card at the top holds the questions Haruno drafted for the month: edit them, record the answers or set a question aside (Questions for management).
- Export the reports as PDF, check them and send them.
Check that every month you need is on the PDF. The investor report goes to investors (mark it reviewed first), the statements to management.
- Draft the commentary with the assistant.
Press Ask Haruno on the card you want to explain and check every figure before it goes out. See Example questions.
- If a reported figure needs correcting, correct it on the record.
Book it in QuickBooks Online, add the corrected export (or sync again) and close. When the lock stops the close, choose Correct…: record the difference in the next open month, or reopen the months it changes with a reason and close again. Before you send the new package, check Restatements… in the Months sheet: every figure you corrected should be listed. See Correct a reported month.
What Haruno does not do yet
A few things readers look for are not in the app yet.
| Not in the app yet | What applies today |
|---|---|
| Deleting a company on Windows | Archive it: it leaves the Portfolio and the month-end closes, and its books are kept. The Mac deletes an archived company's data with Delete Company Data…. |
| Changing a recorded answer, or reading a new kind of file after setup | Draft again, which replaces every recorded answer; for a single answer you can also ask the assistant to change it in the mapping file. Draft again works when the files hold two exports of one statement. |
| Reading a later Stripe or HubSpot export under a new name | Not read, unless it is saved as a copy of one the mapping already reads, such as “name 2.csv”. Otherwise the import says Copied · Not in the mapping. |
| Renaming statement lines or regrouping accounts | Lines keep QuickBooks' captions; only a line the draft had to name itself can be renamed, and only before the first close. |
| Stating useful lives or a depreciation method | Straight line applies. |
| Days sales outstanding, net revenue retention, operating margin | Not computed. |
| Limiting a staff member to certain companies | Everyone using the same macOS user account sees every company. |
Read more: What the app cannot do yet and Removing a company.
Words this guide uses
A few app words mean something other than their everyday sense.
| Term | What it means in Haruno |
|---|---|
| Company | A business whose books you close. Some messages say client; it means the same. |
| Reconciliation workbook | The company's own Excel file of balance-sheet schedules. The file list labels it Reconciliation. |
| Reconciliation binder | The report Haruno draws from that workbook or from QuickBooks reconciliation reports, shown as Reconciliation on the Reports card. |
| Sheet | A panel that opens over the page for one task, such as the Months sheet. In a workbook, a worksheet tab, as in hidden sheets. |
Every other term: Glossary.