Sign up, tell Finocket who you are, and the wizard sets up your books to match — a business gets the full toolkit, a freelancer or individual gets a focused set. Add a client, send a GST invoice, record the payment. Ten minutes and your books are live.
How do I sign up?
Open the sign-up page and create an account with your email and a password, or a social login. Anything you'd already entered (say, from a persona doorway or the kit builder) is kept and waiting for you.
With email and password you'll be asked to confirm your address: we email you a six-digit code, and you type it into the same screen you signed up on. There is no link to find and tap. Your phone will usually offer the code straight from the notification, so it's one tap. The code lasts an hour, and you can ask for a fresh one from that screen if it expires.
A code rather than a link is deliberate. Many company mail systems open every link in an incoming message to scan it for safety, and a confirmation link can only be used once — so it was being used up before the person it was sent to ever saw it. Nothing can use up a code by reading it.
If you already made an account and never confirmed it, just sign in with the same email and password: Finocket sends you a fresh code and asks for it there, rather than turning you away. Then the onboarding wizard starts.
What does the onboarding wizard ask?
First, who you are — business, freelancer / consultant, or salaried / individual — with a second row of refinement chips (like shop, D2C seller, services) you can tap or skip. This choice drives your module set and how the app talks to you. Freelancers and individuals get a shorter, focused wizard.
Then the business steps (each skippable, finishable later from Settings → Business Details):
- Identity — legal name, trade name, business type (proprietor / partnership / LLP / private-limited), industry.
- Tax — GSTIN + PAN, checksum-validated as you type. A valid GSTIN pre-fills your state and derives your PAN. Composition scheme is an option if you qualify.
- Address & contact — postal address, business phone and email.
- Bank — IFSC auto-fills your bank name; account number, UPI VPA, SWIFT for exporters.
- Sales channels — direct B2B/B2C, Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, quick-commerce. What you tick decides which integrations Finocket highlights later.
- Modules — the wizard ends with your recommended module set, pre-selected for your profile. Adjust it now or any time from Settings → Modules & features.
What if I do not know what a step is asking for?
Every step explains itself, in two places, without sending you anywhere:
- The small i beside a field label tells you what to type and what it is used for — what a GSTIN is and what we do with it, whether you need a PAN, the difference between the Regular and Composition schemes.
- Things to know, below the fields, answers the bigger question: why the step is being asked, what happens if you skip it, and where to change it afterwards. Scroll down on any step to read it.
Nothing in setup is permanent. Only your name and account type are required; every other step can be skipped and finished later from Settings → Business Details.
How do I add my first client?
Your dashboard opens with an Add New row — tap Add Client there. On a phone, tap Search in the bottom bar and type “client” — every Add New action is listed there alongside your screens and records. Only the name is required. Enter a GSTIN and Finocket validates it and auto-fills the client's tax state — that's what makes CGST/SGST vs IGST automatic later.
What is in the bar at the bottom of my phone?
Five things, and two of them are raised and coloured because they open something rather than going somewhere:
- Home — always your dashboard, on a phone, a tablet or a computer.
- Your busiest list — clients, books, investments or expenses.
- Search — one box over everything: your screens, your records, every Add New action, and the help articles. Each result says which part of Finocket it belongs to. On a computer the same box opens with Ctrl or ⌘ + K.
- Copilot — Mysty, with what is worth doing next.
- More — everything else you have switched on, grouped by area. See below.
Finding a screen from More, on a phone
More holds every screen you have switched on, and there can be a lot of them. It opens as two columns, and nothing is hidden behind a choice — every screen is on the right from the moment it opens:
- The column of icons down the left. One for each area, in that area’s own colour — Books & tax, CRM & pipeline, Partners and the rest. Tap one and the list beside it jumps to that area. As you scroll the list by hand, the icon for the area you have reached lights up, so you can always see where you are.
- The search box. Type any part of a screen’s name and the list narrows as you type, across every area at once. Results stay under their area heading, so you can still see which part of Finocket each one belongs to.
While you are searching, an area with nothing matching dims out in the left-hand column rather than disappearing, so the areas never move around under your thumb. If nothing matches anywhere, Finocket says so rather than showing you an empty list.
This is for finding a screen. To search your actual records — a client, an invoice, a payment — or to start a new one, use the raised Search button in the middle of the bottom bar instead. On a computer, the 240-pixel panel on the left already shows the same areas, and the narrow strip of icons beside it uses the same colours, though there it narrows the panel to one area rather than jumping down a list.
What is the setup checklist, and how long does it take?
Get your business set up is ten steps, grouped into stages so you can see what belongs together rather than one long list. Each step says how many minutes it takes — most are two or three — and a ring at the top shows how far through you are.
You do not have to do them in order, and you do not have to do all of them. Steps for parts of Finocket you have switched off are hidden, so the checklist never sends you to a screen that just tells you to enable something first; if a whole stage is switched off, the stage disappears with it.
Preview with sample data fills your books with example rows so you can see what a finished screen looks like before entering anything real. Every sample row is marked, so you can remove them all later in one go.
What is on my home page?
Your figures for the month — earned, outstanding, spent and net — sit across the top, with an eye button beside them that hides every amount at once. That is for showing the screen to someone in the room, not for hiding one figure from another.
On a phone everything below that is one column, in the order you have always had it. On a wide screen it splits in two: the things you act on — getting started, the setup checklist, Add new and your recent activity — take the main column, and the things you glance at — Mysty, what an agent could watch for you, the cash-flow note and today's date — sit in a narrower column beside them. Nothing is dropped at either size; the same cards simply arrange themselves differently.
Add new is one grid of every action you can start from here, and every icon carries the same neutral chip so the icon itself tells them apart. Only Ask Mysty is coloured, because it is the one that answers rather than records.
What is the round button in the corner?
One button, three things behind it. Tap it and it opens out to show Ask Mysty, Tools and Quick actions; tap one of those and it does exactly what it always did. Tap the button again, press Escape, or tap anywhere else to close it.
There used to be two of these on a phone and three on a computer, stacked one above the other in the same corner, and on a long list they sat on top of the figures in the right-hand column. They are one now, and nothing was dropped to do it — every action that had its own button still has its own row.
It fades while you scroll, so it is never the thing between you and a number, and it disappears entirely on screens that never had it — signing in, setting up your account, and the tour.
How do I create my first invoice?
- Open Invoices → New.
- Pick the client and add at least one line item.
- Save. Finocket assigns the next number from your series, computes CGST/SGST/IGST from your state vs the client's, and shows the PDF preview.
- Share the PDF on WhatsApp or email — every INR PDF carries a UPI QR so clients can pay from their phone.
How do I record the payment?
Tap Add Payment on the dashboard (or press ⌥P / Alt+Shift+P). Pick the client — every unpaid invoice appears under Against invoice. Pick one and the amount pre-fills. Save, and the invoice flips to paid. If your client withheld TDS (common for services under section 194J), turn on Client deducted TDS? — Finocket suggests 10% of gross and still marks the invoice fully paid at gross, so your outstanding stays correct.
Finding your way around
On a tablet or computer there are two columns down the left, and they do different jobs. The narrow strip at the very edge is the system dock — Finocket itself, and the same icons whichever business you are in and whichever role you hold. The wider column beside it is the menu — your business screens, and nothing else.
Each area has its own colour, and it is the same colour everywhere — on a phone, a tablet and a computer. Its icons carry it in the menu, the area you are currently in is tinted so it stands out from the rest, and a thin band under the page title repeats it. Open a form or a panel and it arrives wearing the colour of the page you opened it from, so a full-screen sheet never loses track of where you were.
Buttons are the exception, on purpose: Save, Cancel and Delete keep the same colours on every screen in Finocket, so what a button does never depends on where you are standing.
The dock
14 icons, and it does not scroll. Hover one to read its name. Top to bottom:
- The Finocket mark at the very top opens the logo; it is not a way home.
- Home and Search — the two you reach for most. Search opens the quick-jump box from anywhere (or press
⌘K/Ctrl+K), and it is there whether or not the menu is folded away, which is the point of putting it here. If you work as an accountant, Home is your client portfolio. - Seven area icons — Books & tax, Personal finance, CRM & pipeline, Outreach, Partners, Platform and AI. These are what change the menu beside them. See below.
- Recent, Help and your account picture, at the foot. Each opens a menu beside itself, not across the screen.
Getting home when the dock is not there
Two screens hide the dock and the phone bar on purpose, so that nothing competes with the one thing they are asking you to do: the welcome tour and account setup. On a computer there is a Home button in the top bar, beside the bell and the help mark, and it works on every screen including those two. On a phone the word Finocket next to the logo has always done the same thing. Either one takes you to your dashboard — or to your client portfolio, if you work as an accountant.
Things that used to have their own icon here — Notifications, Running jobs, Activity, Integrations, Explore modules, AI agents, AI workflows, Automations, Ask Mysty and What's New — have not gone anywhere. Notifications is the bell in the top bar, What's New is in your account menu, and the rest are rows in the Platform and AI areas — Ask Mysty and Automations both sit under AI. Several of them can be opened on a phone now for the first time, because this bar is not drawn on one.
Showing one area at a time
The menu holds everything you have switched on, which on a full workspace is a long list. The area icons in the dock narrow it: tap Books and the menu shows Books and nothing else, in the colour that area uses everywhere in Finocket. Tap the same icon again, or the All areas button at the top of the menu, to see the whole list again.
You do not have to pick. Open a screen and the menu narrows to whichever area that screen belongs to, so you arrive with the ten entries around you rather than the eighty. Home, Settings and your account are never hidden by an area, and if an area has nothing switched on the menu stays whole rather than emptying.
The menu
Grouped by what you are doing — Books & tax, Personal finance, CRM & pipeline, Outreach & compliance and so on — and each group collapses, so you can put away the parts you do not use. A group appears only when something in it is switched on.
- A chevron beside an entry opens and closes its sub-items where it stands. Tapping the name itself still goes to the screen, so you can look without leaving.
- Recents is the dock's clock icon: the last five screens you opened on this device. It is not shared between your phone and your computer, and it never records a specific invoice or client — only screens.
- Settings is the gear in the narrow icon strip on the far left, below Recents and beside Help and your account. That strip does not scroll and does not change with the area you have picked, so the gear is in the same place whatever you are looking at. It opens the settings page, which carries every section — Team Members, GST returns and the rest — down its own side. The wider panel lists Settings too, which is what you tap on a phone, where the icon strip is not shown; your account menu has the same row.
- Explore modules is everything you have not switched on, and switches it on in place. It lives in the Platform area now, beside Integrations, rather than sitting under every screen.
- Press
⌘B/Ctrl+Bto fold the menu down to icons when you want the room. The dock stays where it is.
Which switcher is which
Depending on how you use Finocket you may see up to three, and they move you between three different things. The first two are rows in your account menu — the picture at the foot of the icon bar — so “which account, which organisation, which company” is one question asked in one place. The third is in the top bar, because it is about the page you are reading rather than the account you are in.
- Organisation — between organisations, or between accounts you are signed in to. Only if you have more than one.
- Company — between legal entities inside this workspace. Only if you have added a second company.
- Client, in the top bar — whose books you are reading. Only if someone has given you access to theirs.
Help
The ? in the top bar always explains the screen you are on. The dock's help icon offers that same guide first, and then the rest: the help centre, the developer guides, the API reference, and how to connect an AI agent to your Finocket data.
On a phone
There is no dock. The bar along the bottom is Home, the one screen you use most, +, More and Profile. More now opens with search and where you have just been, then everything you have switched on and Explore modules; Profile is Settings. Your notifications bell, the ? for this screen's guide, the theme switch and your account picture sit along the top.
Changing your business details, and knowing they saved
Settings → Business Details holds what prints on your invoices — your name and address, your logo, and the bank account customers pay into. It does not have a Save button sitting there all the time. It appears when you change something, and it tells you how much is waiting:3 unsaved.
Open Review changes and it lists every edit in words, with the old value beside the new one, grouped the way the page is. If one of them was a mistake, Undo puts that single field back without losing the rest.Discard all throws away everything you have changed since the last save.
Saving keeps you on the page, so you can carry on with the sections further down. If you try to leave with something unsaved — tapping Home, or the back button — Finocket asks first, and offers to save and take you where you were going in one step.
Only what you changed is sent. That matters if you are not the owner: bank details, PAN, email and UPI can be changed only by the owner or an admin, so if you are an assistant editing the PIN code, the PIN code is all that is written — you are no longer refused because of a bank field you never touched.
Where to go next
- Clients & invoices — every document type, series numbering, credit notes.
- Install Finocket as a real app — on your phone, with a queue for the entries you make with no signal.
- Try Finocket with sample data — explore before entering real work.
- Modules & plans — run only what you need.